search engine optimization tools
search engine optimisation information

The Myth of the Meta Tag

Times change, and the Internet changes quickly.

Many, many years ago (about 1999), one of the critical factors for getting a high ranking for your website were your meta tags.

Yes, those were the days when the Internet consisted of (gasp) over two hundred million pages (Google now indexes over three BILLION). The days when Alta Vista and Hotbot were two contenders for top search engines.

Well, as the Internet has exploded in size, as the the search engines have jostled for position and popularity, the top search engines have become ever more sophisticated. What has that done to the importance of the Meta Tags?

In a nutshell, it has made them virtually irrelevant.

As of July, 2003, only these search engine even use the description meta tag (From SearchEngineNews, July, 2003):

1. Ask/Teoma (Teoma is strictly a paid inclusion engine)

2. Alta Vista, which offers both paid and free inclusion

3. Possibly Lycos/AlltheWeb

Together, all three of these search engines only get about 3.41% of the total daily search engine (According to WordTracker).

How many characters can you use in the keywords section? The three engines above will index up to 1,129 characters and spaces in the keywords metatag.

In the description metatag, they will index also index 1,129 characters and spaces.

I think you'll agree that if only about 3.4% of internet searches are influenced by meta tags, it is time to look for new ways to improve your search engine rankings!

 

 

---