All MetaTags

[gireesh-nair]

Hi there,
Can you explain all the meta tags used in web pages and also explain each metatag in specific and tell how each of them affect rankings in diffrent search engines.

thanks in advance......
Gireesh

http://www.imanthra.com

[cbp]

They are all pretty much a waste of time.

The only one that is worth having is the Title tag - but it probably pays to also have the description and keywpord tag there (with only a few key keywords).

All the other tags do not help - they may even harm in that the SE spiders have to crawl through all that stuff before it gets to the real stuff on the page that really counts.

CBP

[sfowler]

I would definitely include description and keywords, there are other search engines out there as well! Some of the directories will not accept a site without these tags.

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by cbp

They are all pretty much a waste of time. The only one that is worth having is the Title tag - but it probably pays to also have the description and keyword tag there (with only a few key keywords).

Title, Description, and Keywords definitely - bear in mind that even Google uses the first two (I'm not going to re-start the debate about Google and the third) and that there are other search engines which still use the third.

All the other tags do not help - they may even harm in that the SE spiders have to crawl through all that stuff before it gets to the real stuff on the page that really counts.

Exceptions: some site may need to declare a character set corresponding to a language (and alphabet) other than English.

[gireesh-nair]

Hi......

what I wanted to know was that I have seen some using metatags other than "KEYWORDS" and "DESCRIPTION" for example "RATING" , "ROBOTS" etc......

I would aprreciate if someone can throw light on tags like these and explain how many of them are there and what impact they make on the listing or ranking of search engines ?

Thanks
Gireesh.R
http://www.imanthra.com

[minstrel]

There are several threads at WPW about meta tags - try doing a search.

There's also a fairly good article by Danny Sullivan - although I don't agree with everything he says, I'd agreee with most of it.

For a very comprehensive source of information (perhaps more than you want), see the vancouver-webpages.com site.

[gireesh-nair]

thanks ......
That is pretty nice....i am just digging the links ....

Gireesh.R

http://www.imanthra.com

[cbp]

what impact they make on the listing or ranking of search engines ?

As replied above they have NO effect on search engine rankings except for title and maybe description and maybe keywords.

CBP