No More Meta Magic: Meta Tags Obsolete

IMPORTANT NOTE! This information, originally obtained by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch, later clarified. Changes as noted below.

Search engine positioning experts note that the meta tag is pretty much useless in web sites of today.

What is a meta tag?
A meta tag is a string of text that is in the code, is not visible to people who are browsing the page, and looks like this:

<meta name="author" content="Rebecca St. Martin">

Where do meta tags exist?
You can find meta tags in the "source code" of an HTML document.  To see the source code for this web page DO THIS:

• In your browser (e.g. whatever you're using to look at this page.)
• From the "View" menu, select "Source" or "Page Source"
• Look for the word EXAMPLE in capital letters. These words have been coded into the meta tags.

What are meta tags for?
Up until recently (past year or so), using them helped give web pages an advantage in search engine positioning; adding meta tags to the code gave the page an advantage of being ranked higher on the engine than it would without.

At first, engines looked only at a page's meta tags to determine it's "score" . As web site became plentiful, the search engines created new, additional ways to rank a page so that it could produce more refined results.

Now, meta tags are supported by only one search engine, Inktomi.  

What should you DO?

• DO continue to research keywords that will help you find a niche market on search engines.
• DO weave the keywords into the copy of your site, using all the positioning tricks of your targeted search engines.
• DO NOT invest budget in having keywords coded for meta tag use.
• DO invest in creating good page titles, instead.
• DO use metatags, but realize that they alone will not help your ranking efforts.

Visit Search Engine Watch for the full story.