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Google Puzzle

Posted on:: December 12th, 2002

Mark Dionne emails me an interesting puzzle he’s discovered:

I just determined that Google does NOT index according to HTML “meta name=”keywords”” markup. I have a word in that markup in a page of mine that does not appear in the body of the page. If I hit the page with a search and then add the word, the page is no longer found.

In other words, let’s say I have a page about cats that puts “Siamese” into the meta tag for keywords but doesn’t otherwise contain the word “Siamese.” If the page contains the phrase “Cats love rubber baby bumpers,” a search on that phrase pulls up the page, but a search on “Cats love rubber baby bumpers” Siamese” does not.

Do we have any confirming evidence that Mark hasn’t simply run into an anomaly? Does Google discard keywords because they are often used to torque the system? Is this yet another argument against relying on humans explicitly tagging content? Is this a death knell for the Semantic Web? Will Ashley discover that Grayson is not only her lover but is also her transsexual twin sister? Tune in for “As the Web Spins”…

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26 Responses to “Google Puzzle”

  1. Glenn Fleishman, on December 12th, 2002 at 10:25 am Said:

    I believe Google doesn’t use Meta tags at all, and has often said that! Remember Cory Doctorow’s comment during the Google panel at Supernova 2002? He’s now the domain expert for a bunch of things he mentioned in passing, like Morpheus, because he’s got so much Google karma.

  2. COD, on December 12th, 2002 at 3:14 pm Said:

    Google ignores meta tags completely. There is no way to guarantee that the keywords in the tag are at all related to the site content. They have been used by all the usual suspects to manipulate search engine results. Google uses site content, links, and whatever else is in their magic brew, but meta tags are not one of them. I saw an article recently (but don’t remember where) saying that the meta tag keywords were obsolete and ignored by just about every major search engine.

  3. SEO, on February 21st, 2003 at 11:43 am Said:

    The only case where Google may use meta tags – not keywords but description – may happen when using a frame with no text in noframe part. As there is no relevant content at such pages they take what’s there – in this case the meta description. But I don’t know whether that happens currently or if it has been an experiment.

  4. Miami Real Estate, on March 21st, 2003 at 9:55 am Said:

    Google ingores meta tags!

  5. firestarter, on September 8th, 2003 at 5:43 am Said:

    Yep Google ignores them. But perhabs the Part with the frameset is right.

  6. reinhard, on October 11th, 2003 at 5:48 am Said:

    At this time google will completely ignore Meta Tags.

  7. dirk, on October 28th, 2003 at 11:50 am Said:

    And now the domain name is not important any more

  8. haltezeitmessungen, on November 9th, 2003 at 10:41 am Said:

    yepp

  9. suchmaschinenoptimierung, on November 9th, 2003 at 10:41 am Said:

    this is right

  10. suchmaschinenanmeldung, on February 2nd, 2004 at 7:52 am Said:

    …definitly…;-))

  11. government grants, on May 20th, 2004 at 12:23 am Said:

    congrats mate! Fine job and fine site!

    government grants

  12. bodoro, on May 3rd, 2006 at 10:39 am Said:

    Sehr gut

  13. sumalized, on September 16th, 2006 at 9:48 am Said:

    ..das Thema mit den Keywords hat sich vor Jahren endgültig erledigt: http://www.sumalized.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-linkaufbau/2006/09/15/seoo-google-optimiert-suchmaschinenoptimierung-und-seo/

  14. witze, on November 28th, 2006 at 9:30 am Said:

    sehe ich auch so, nicht mehr aktuell. meta-tags gehören der vergangenheit an.

  15. vorwahlen, on December 24th, 2006 at 4:48 pm Said:

    jep, ebenso. keywords kann man sich sparen. zeit nutzen und in andere seo-maßnahmen investieren.

  16. Minko, on February 9th, 2007 at 11:01 am Said:

    Wie schon gesagt. Meta-tags sind völlig out. Zum Glück gibt es noch so viele seo maßnahmen auf dem Markt.

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