View Full Version : About META Description Tags
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 16:17
Hello everyone,
I had a question about this article on SearchEngineWatch (which i was recommended to read).
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931
Right now i'm making a site of my own (hosted on Tripod) and i'm trying to get my site up so it shows up on search engines (mainly Google).
I'm having difficulty's using the "Meta Description Tag" on my site.
In the article (How to use HTML META tags) it says "Look back at the example of a meta tag. See the first meta tag shown, the one that says "name=description"? That's the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed)."
I captured a screenshot of what it looks like:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/...ntitled3gq2.png
I was able to follow all of that, but the problem is, my site says
"200 character limit. HTML tags are not allowed. Some search engines use the description in the search engine results."
Here's a screenshot of what comes up after i typed the META tags in:
http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/948/untitled4if6.png
So, my question is, how am i supposed to use the META tags without being able to use the HTML tags?
I did exacltly what is says in the article but when i go to click "Ok" (on my website) is says
"The description meta tag is not defined correctly. Seperate keywords by a comma. Ex: web design, animation, design, create. HTML tags are not allowed."
Also, for some reason when i'm trying to Verify that i'm the owner of the site (on Google), it can't read my META tags (when i try to put it on my site)
Here's a picture of what i'm talking about:
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/...ntitled5xm9.png
Why does this have to be frustrating?
Another question.
Is there any other way to get my site up on Google? I've tried adding my site but they haven't seem to come across it or something.
Am i doing something wrong? It'd be greatly appreciated if someone could help me out!
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 16:37
how do u define your meta tags? could you show it?...
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 16:46
how do u define your meta tags? could you show it?...
I'm going by what Google is telling me:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Your Title</TITLE>
<META name="verify-v1" contents="String_we_ask_for">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Mine is:
HTML
HEAD
TITLE The Black Cat /TITLE
META name="verify-v1" content="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8cc"
/HEAD
BODY
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 16:56
where do all the '<' '>' go? and how do u define the description meta tag? it must be wrong...
it should be something like this:
--------------------------------------------
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Black Cat</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
<META NAME="verify-v1" CONTENT="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
</HEAD>
<BODY>
your content
</BODY>
</HTML>
---------------------------------
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34397
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 16:58
where do all the '<' '>' go?
it should be like this:
--------------------------------------------
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Black Cat</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
</HEAD>
<BODY>
your content
</BODY>
</HTML>
Like i said, they (for some reason) don't allow the "< & >". Thats why i'm slightly confused and they say to add comma's to it?
Wait, do you have to include both
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
?
Forget about those meta tags. The ones you'll need are for charset and content language, and maybe rederict if you feel like that. Search engines such as Google will not care about these tags, they'll only index your actual content. The reason for this is that many people put completely unrelated things in those tags ("sex" was a particular favourite), so they would rank high on search engines. Google was one of the first to ignore these tags, nowadays, most engines do.
Edit: One more thing: If you are using XHTML, as indicated by your doctype, you are required to have all tag names in lowercase. So it's not:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Black Cat</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
<META NAME="verify-v1" CONTENT="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
</HEAD>
<BODY>
your content
</BODY>
</HTML>
it ought to be:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>The Black Cat</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1 keyword2" />
<meta name="description" content="This is my site" />
<meta name="verify-v1" content="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
</head>
<body>
your content
</body>
</html>
Also notice the xmlns attribute on the <html> element. This, too, is required by XHTML, as well as the <?xml version="1.0" ?> line. If you think that this is all too much change for you, you're probably right (there is currently no advantage from using XHTML, and there hasn't been any since 1999), and it's best if you change to normal HTML 4. For that, just replace the Doctype line you already have with <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> and change the /> at the end of the meta tag to a simple >.
Edit 2: What the hell is verify-v1? I've never ever heard of that meta attribute.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 17:09
Forget about those meta tags. The ones you'll need are for charset and content language, and maybe rederict if you feel like that. Search engines such as Google will not care about these tags, they'll only index your actual content. The reason for this is that many people put completely unrelated things in those tags ("sex" was a particular favourite), so they would rank high on search engines. Google was one of the first to ignore these tags, nowadays, most engines do.
I tried submitting my URL to them, but when i try searching the URL directly on Google, it doesn't come up. =/
I don't know what else i can do to get my site up on there. I've worked hard putting it all together but now i can't even get the darn thing up on Google! :(
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 17:19
Edit: One more thing: If you are using XHTML, as indicated by your doctype, you are required to have all tag names in lowercase. So it's not:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>The Black Cat</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
<META NAME="verify-v1" CONTENT="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
</HEAD>
<BODY>
your content
</BODY>
</HTML>
it ought to be:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>The Black Cat</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1 keyword2" />
<meta name="description" content="This is my site" />
<meta name="verify-v1" content="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
</head>
<body>
your content
</body>
</html>
Also notice the xmlns attribute on the <html> element. This, too, is required by XHTML, as well as the <?xml version="1.0" ?> line. If you think that this is all too much change for you, you're probably right (there is currently no advantage from using XHTML, and there hasn't been any since 1999), and it's best if you change to normal HTML 4. For that, just replace the Doctype line you already have with <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> and change the /> at the end of the meta tag to a simple >.
Edit 2: What the hell is verify-v1? I've never ever heard of that meta attribute.
Question, where did you get the....
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
...from?
What is that exactly?
Another thing, would there be a huge change if i used HTML4 and XHTML? Does this affect search results or anything?
About the "Varify" thing...It's on Google. Look at the last picture i posted. It asked me to put that in to Varify i was the site owner.
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 17:22
i think u misunderstand the message...
look back at the example i gave you:
...
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
...
The point is the value of the CONTENT attribute:
it must not contain HTML tags
ex:
bad: CONTENT="something < anything > "
good: CONTENT="someting anything"
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 17:29
i think u misunderstand the message...
look back at the example i gave you:
...
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword1 keyword2" />
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This is my site" />
...
The point is the value of the CONTENT attribute:
it must not contain HTML tags
ex:
bad: CONTENT="something < anything > "
good: CONTENT="someting anything"
I'm aware of that though. Isn't that what i did? I didn't include < or > in my tags.
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 17:29
<META NAME="verify-v1" CONTENT="hspTW0HekqYB2IfVubwRWhHmk75za0q9iMQSXdOT8 cc" />
It is used by Google to verify the owner of a site...
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8464
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8472
However i think it's not necessary to do that...
just look at the big sites: microsoft.com, yahoo.com ... they don't do that the "Google" way
Moreoever, Google is able to do it automatically:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34397
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 17:34
I'm aware of that though. Isn't that what i did? I didn't include < or > in my tags.
it's not that...
you must not include < or > between the quotation marks... CONTENT="must not do it here"
outside the quotation marks, you still have to keep < or >
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 17:36
it's not that...
you must not include < or > between the quotation marks... CONTENT="must not do it here"
outside the quotation marks, you still have to keep < or >
Ohhhhh, okay, i see what you mean.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 17:41
Okay so what is the
"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<HTML>"
?
Another thing, isn't Varifying my site on Google good? Wouldn't it tell me if my site is there or not?
If not,
is there anything else i can do to get my site up on Google? (other then just adding my URL on Google) I tried that and it's been two days since and its' not up).
Fascinating, I never heard about the verify thing. Anyway, to answer your questions:
Changing from XHTML to HTML 4 does not change anything. Theoretically, XHTML is the wave of the future, extensible, flexible, modular, yada yada yada. Practically, you don't get any bonus for using it. Writing correct HTML 4 is actually better than writing incorrect XHTML. Google will not care either way.
The lines at the beginning that I told you:
The first of the lines is an XML declaration. It defines what version of XML you are using. XML is a framework for defining your own HTML-like languages, and XHTML is HTML defined in XML. You can choose between 1.0 and 1.1, but even the inventors of XML say that you should choose 1.0 unless you have a good reason not to.
The second line is the doctype declaration. It defines the exact grammar, how a valid HTML document may be written. Using it is also a way of telling the browser that you write correct, standard code instead of what is often called "tag soup". If you have tag soup, a browser will try to work as close as possible to Internet Explorer 5, otherwise, it will do what it really should do according to the official web standards.
To make things more fun, Internet Explorer 6 will only recognise the doctype declaration if it is the first line of the document. However, if you use XML, the first line of the document has to be the XML declaration. The usual solution to this problem is to either not bother with XHTML or not bother with Internet Explorer. Pick one.
By the way, you need a doctype declaration for both HTML and XHTML, but for HTML, it looks differently.
Finally, there is the document's root element, the html element which encloses all others. The xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" line tells an XML parser that all elements that have no prefix are XHTML elements. You could be quite creative with this declaration, but web browsers will usually not understand this, so don't mess with it.
Edit: A solution to get your site picked up by Google: Well, there is no secret to that. If you submitted your page to Google, it might take up to a month to appear in the results. If you have friends who have a website that is in Google, ask them to put a link to your site on theirs. This should increase your chances of getting found. Also, add your site's address to your profile in forums you visit, and post it everywhere else where it is allowed and fits.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 18:01
^ Thanks for your help.
One last question, do META tags increase the chance of your site to be found?
Or could Google just pick out words and stumble across my site and put it as one of the links?
META tags do not increase the chance of your site being found. It's either found, or it's not. Google can only read your meta tags after it has found your site.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 18:14
META tags do not increase the chance of your site being found. It's either found, or it's not. Google can only read your meta tags after it has found your site.
Alright, to just be clear, when my site is recognized on Google. Will it pick up words from my site if someone types in one of the keywords on my site (Ex. Black Cat)? & The more my site is viewed, the more likely chance it will be near the top of the search results?
nothingtolose
24-08-06, 18:20
yes, those xhtml things don't add much value for now... you can choose to do the simple way...
I've just have a look at the html sources of some sites: yahoo, microsoft, even google... they still do it the old way...
btw, i've just found out that all pages of tombraiderforums.com are xhtml1 compliant... :tmb:
about the google thing, i guess it's all up to google...
@nothingtolose: Only transitional. There's still lots of structural markup everywhere.
Hybrid Soldier: When Google finds your page, it reads it and puts it's contents in its database. When someone searches with Google, Google only reads in its internal database. Google will show your page as a search result if the words you have on the actual site (not in meta tags) match a search request. How far on top you'll get depends upon several factors, such as how often and where the keywords can be found, how many other sites link to your site and many other things that Google won't tell anyone. The best, though most difficult way, to appear on top of the search results is being the best ressource for the topic one can find on the internet.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 21:36
@nothingtolose: Only transitional. There's still lots of structural markup everywhere.
Hybrid Soldier: When Google finds your page, it reads it and puts it's contents in its database. When someone searches with Google, Google only reads in its internal database. Google will show your page as a search result if the words you have on the actual site (not in meta tags) match a search request. How far on top you'll get depends upon several factors, such as how often and where the keywords can be found, how many other sites link to your site and many other things that Google won't tell anyone. The best, though most difficult way, to appear on top of the search results is being the best ressource for the topic one can find on the internet.
Ohhhh, really? So it'll pull words like the title of my site (depending on the search of course)?
Wait, whats the point in META tags then?
Wait, whats the point in META tags then?
The meta tags are used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes. Sometimes.
jamieoliver22
24-08-06, 22:28
I dunno if this will help at all, but here are all the meta tags for my site.
<meta name="description" content="A personal portfolio website of Jamie Oliver./>
<meta name="keywords" content="jamie oliver, jamieoliver22, portfolio, graphics, web design, webdesign, design, photoshop, games, images, forums"/>
<meta name="author" content="Jamie Oliver"/>
<meta name="owner" content="Jamie Oliver" />
<meta name="copyright" content="Website copyrighted to Jamie Oliver, 2006. Alpha-Lite.co.uk - All Rights Reserved." />
<meta name="robot" content="ALL" />
<meta name="rating" content="E - Everyone" />
<meta name="language" content="English" />
<meta name="distribution" content="Global" />
<meta name="publisher" content="http://www.alpha-lite.co.uk/" />
That's the point I've been trying to get across: There's no point in meta tags, at least as far as Google is concerned. Some search engines do care about them, but Google does not.
There are exceptions:
You can use meta tags to define the charset for your document. That is always a good idea, because it tells web browsers and search engines how to deal with non-standard characters like äöüᥩßæ and so on. The required code looks like this:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" /> Instead of ISO-8859-1, insert whatever your editor uses. You can usually tell your editor what to use, otherwise it's either ISO-8859-1 or UTF8. It is easiest to try this out, put some special letters in your site and see which one of the two settings makes them appear correctly.
You can use meta tags to redirect to another page. Search engines aren't particularly fond of this, but have known how to deal with this since the late nineties. The code looks like this: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=http://de.selfhtml.org/"> The 5 is the number of the seconds your browser should wait before redericting you. You can also use 0, to be redirected automatically. Using this is frowned upon, but it always works.
You can use meta tags to define the language of your site. That way, search engines won't have to guess, and if someone selects "Search only in <some language>", your page will appear correctly. For english, the code is: <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en">
If you use inline CSS (style="...") or JavaScript (on<Whatever>="..." or href="javascript:..."), you are technically required to set a default content type for both. Practically, nobody bothers to, but if you want to be cool, you can always use <meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> for this.
You can use it to tell a search engine not to find your site. The code is:<meta name="robots" content="noindex">. Noindex means: Do not let this page appear in search results. Use nofollow instead if you forbid a search engine to follow the links on your site. Use noindex,nofollow to forbid both. You can also explicitly allow a search engine to search your site, but that brings no advantage and does not make your site appear faster in Google.
You can point out when your site was last updated, by using the horribly complex <meta name="date" content="2001-12-15T08:49:37+02:00"> The date here translates to 15th of December 2001, 08:49:37 AM, two hours distance from UTC.
Except for the first two, you won't get much out of using any on this list.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 22:44
That's the point I've been trying to get across: There's no point in meta tags, at least as far as Google is concerned. Some search engines do care about them, but Google does not.
There are exceptions:
You can use meta tags to define the charset for your document. That is always a good idea, because it tells web browsers and search engines how to deal with non-standard characters like äöüᥩßæ and so on. The required code looks like this:<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" /> Instead of ISO-8859-1, insert whatever your editor uses. You can usually tell your editor what to use, otherwise it's either ISO-8859-1 or UTF8. It is easiest to try this out, put some special letters in your site and see which one of the two settings makes them appear correctly.
You can use meta tags to redirect to another page. Search engines aren't particularly fond of this, but have known how to deal with this since the late nineties. The code looks like this: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; URL=http://de.selfhtml.org/"> The 5 is the number of the seconds your browser should wait before redericting you. You can also use 0, to be redirected automatically. Using this is frowned upon, but it always works.
You can use meta tags to define the language of your site. That way, search engines won't have to guess, and if someone selects "Search only in <some language>", your page will appear correctly. For english, the code is: <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en">
If you use inline CSS (style="...") or JavaScript (on<Whatever>="..." or href="javascript:..."), you are technically required to set a default content type for both. Practically, nobody bothers to, but if you want to be cool, you can always use <meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> for this.
You can use it to tell a search engine not to find your site. The code is:<meta name="robots" content="noindex">. Noindex means: Do not let this page appear in search results. Use nofollow instead if you forbid a search engine to follow the links on your site. Use noindex,nofollow to forbid both. You can also explicitly allow a search engine to search your site, but that brings no advantage and does not make your site appear faster in Google.
You can point out when your site was last updated, by using the horribly complex <meta name="date" content="2001-12-15T08:49:37+02:00"> The date here translates to 15th of December 2001, 08:49:37 AM, two hours distance from UTC.
Except for the first two, you won't get much out of using any on this list.
Alright.
If i want to post the two top META tags, which/where would i put them under, keywords or description?
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9914/clipboard01ea3.th.jpg (http://img166.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clipboard01ea3.jpg)
Uhh… neither. Seems like you use a web editor that cannot do that. Now I understand your problem for the first time.
What happens is the following: The two most common meta tags are keywords and description. It seems like your editor is already inserting them, so the final code looks like:
<meta name="keyword" content="The stuff you wrote in the web editor">
Which means that you cannot add new meta tags at all.
Hybrid Soldier
24-08-06, 22:50
Uhh… neither. Seems like you use a web editor that cannot do that. Now I understand your problem for the first time.
What happens is the following: The two most common meta tags are keywords and description. It seems like your editor is already inserting them, so the final code looks like:
<meta name="keyword" content="The stuff you wrote in the web editor">
Which means that you cannot add new meta tags at all.
Hmmm, is that a good or bad thing now?
To be honest, i wasn't sure how to use any other web builder and that was the only one that seemed easy to use.
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