Google says Meta Tags are no longer relevant to search, Bing disputes

Published: September 24th, 2009 by Last Click News

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Google says Meta Tags are no longer relevant to search, Bing disputes  | read this item

Last Monday, Google reaffirmed that Meta tags no longer boost a site’s rankings in search engine queries.

Meta tags are part of a website’s codes, which give extra information about the site to search engines. Meta tags are comprised of keywords that summarize what the site is about. This information is delivered to the search engine, which in turn will possess an idea about the main topics of the site.

Traditionally, search engine use Meta tags to decide if a particular site is relevant to a particular search. Theoretically, that makes these tags important for search engine algorithms. However, Google has—again and again—emphasized that these Meta tags have no relevance to search engine optimization (SEO).

In a recent report, it was explained that Google stopped making Meta tags an SEO factor upon learning that some websites started misusing them (i.e. when sites use Meta tags that are not relevant just to strengthen its search engine campaign).

Despite this, business sites can ill afford to ignore Meta tags; because according to Microsoft, they still use these tags for Bing. Microsoft’s current search engine partner—Yahoo—has not confirmed whether or not it still uses these tags.

Source: Direct Traffic Media

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Readers Comments

  1. jeffklemin says:

    Meta tags maybe irrelevant for rankings, but Google still uses the desc for listings.

  2. [...] yet the argument continues. Other search engines disagree, for instance Bing disputes what Google says. Well, this is a pretty simple argument to end, but a very important one! If you are even remotely [...]

  3. [...] On a side note, some of you may find this particular news article of interest. It talks about Google doing away completely with meta-tags and only Bing will continue to observe [...]

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