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Thread: meta tags
Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)
From: webmaster
Date: Mon, May 02 2005 4:10AM
Subject: meta tags
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Hi,
my firm is particularly concerned with meta tags like description, keywords and the like which help search engine positioning.
Do these tags impact accessibility in any way ?
Thank you
--
http://www.web-engine.it
From: Jens Meiert
Date: Mon, May 02 2005 4:20AM
Subject: Re: meta tags
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>Do these tags impact accessibility in any way ?
No. At the utmost indirectly (indicating support for certain assistive
devices, for example).
-- Jens Meiert Information Architect http://meiert.com/
From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Mon, May 02 2005 4:30AM
Subject: Re: meta tags
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On Mon, 2 May 2005, webmaster wrote:
>> my firm is particularly concerned with meta tags like description, keywords
>> and the like which help search engine positioning.
They were regarded as potentially useful ten years ago. Due to continued
abuse ("keyword spamming" etc.), they are mostly ignored by search
engines. However, sometimes search engines still use then, and then you
may encounter some real difficulties. The point is that authors who try to
use those tags usually do it the wrong way, though sometimes they may do
it the very wrong way.
In particular, authors or their employers typically try to boost up the
pages by including marketese and hot words. This works against the needs
of users, and ultimately the interests of the sites as well - either
such marketing techniques are ignored by search engines, or they are used
by so many parties that there is no competitive advantage.
>> Do these tags impact accessibility in any way ?
They are not presented as page content, so basically the answer is "No".
However, they can confuse people by confusing searches and by presenting
the page improperly in search engine results.
-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Mon, May 02 2005 4:53AM
Subject: Re: meta tags
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>>my firm is particularly concerned with meta tags like description, keywords
>>> > and the like which help search engine positioning.
>
>>
As Jukka pointed out, they do not have much impact on search engines
these days. What does though are proper titles, headers and the text
content high up in the document tree with a clean structure. This also
means higher accessibility.
-- Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/
From: Eoin Campbell
Date: Mon, May 02 2005 12:18PM
Subject: Re: meta tags
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I believe that metatags can greatly improve accessibility and usability if
used properly to provide useful information to a locally configured
search engine such as SWISH-E.
As an example, try searching on www.entemp.ie, which uses Dublin Core
metadata tags to associate subject descriptors with individual pages
(DC.Subject), date modified (DC.Date.modified), etc.
Although search engines like Google don't make use of them, a well-configured
local search engine can use them to provide really good, accessible search
results.
At 19:00 02/05/2005, you wrote:
>>my firm is particularly concerned with meta tags like description, keywords and the like which help search engine positioning.
>>
>>Do these tags impact accessibility in any way ?
>>Thank you
--
Eoin Campbell, Technical Director, XML Workshop Ltd.
10 Greenmount Industrial Estate, Harolds Cross, Dublin, Ireland.
Phone: +353 1 4547811; fax: +353 1 4496299.
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ; web: www.xmlw.ie
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