Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 03:08:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brooks@one-eyed-alien.net (Brooks Davis) Cc: chip@wiegand.org (chip), chat@FreeBSD.ORG (chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Subject: Re: off topic in chat? Search Engines question Message-ID: <200012080308.UAA02321@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20001206180631.A15059@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> from "Brooks Davis" at Dec 06, 2000 06:06:31 PM
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> > I have been asked to put some new meta keywords on a web > > site I made, and the client wants to use almost 30. I have > > tried to explain to them that is probably too many. > > I have emailed several search engine admins asking them > > what they consider an appropriate amount, or max number of > > keywords in the meta tags. > > What are the opinions of the people on this list of this topic? > > Meta tags may well be dead. Google doesn't use them because they are > basicaly useless (99.999% of sites with META keywords just make them up > to get hits.) I suspect other search engines will be moving in the > same direction since everyone is moving towards a model more like > google's then like early search engines. See: http://register-it.netscape.com/O=wsg/content/searchtips.html There really isn't a limit, but you should keep them focussed; Netscape suggests using common "creative" spellings, as well as plurals, etc., of your keywords. The description portion is limited to 200 (or truncated to 150) characters by some search engines. For brain-damaged search engines, like google and IBM's "Intelligent Miner", both of which I find to be worse than useless for searching when I already know the lexicography for what I want (almost always), they suggest using your keywords early on on your page, and suggest registering multiple pages when you have otherwise thinly related content, rather than trying to get your entire site listed by the keywords on one page. Personally, I'm sticking with Altavista... NB: The more keywords you use, the more likely your site is to be considered in a particular category related to the keyword, which can trigger filtering spiders to include your page in prohibition lists based on content, as well. Your best bet is to keep the keyword list short and relevent to your audience (sex sites and other frequently filtered content can ignore this, since they are going to get into the filtering lists, no matter what). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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