Sorry, Yahoo, You DO Index The Meta Keywords Tag

Oct 14, 2009 at 2:31pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Oh, that this weren't true. Last week, Yahoo made news by disclosing that it had quietly dropped support for the meta keywords tag. As a long time hater of that tag and the insane questions it has produced, I was thrilled! But today, I see conclusively that Yahoo still supports the tag. The test was simple. I placed a unique word in the meta keywords tag on the home page of Search Engine Land. This word -- xcvteuflsowkldlslkslklsk -- generated no results on Yahoo when I looked earlier this week. Today, when I searched, it brought back the Search Engine Land home page. Thus, Yahoo indeed ind [...]

Filed in: Features: General, Microsoft: Bing SEO, SEO: Tagging, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, SEO: Writing & Body Copy, Top News, Yahoo: SEO

Yahoo Search No Longer Uses Meta Keywords Tag

Oct 6, 2009 at 2:15pm ET by Barry Schwartz

And then there were none. Yahoo has long been the only major search engine that supported the meta keywords tag. However, the search engine revealed today that like the other majors, it no longer supports it. The news came during the Ask The Search Engines session at SMX East in New York today. The search engines were all asked about their support of the tag. Moderator Danny Sullivan noted that only Yahoo provided support of the tag -- prompting Cris Pierry, senior director of search at Yahoo, to announce that support actually had been ended unannounced "several" months ago. Bing doesn't [...]

Filed in: SEO: General, SEO: Tagging, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, SEO: Writing & Body Copy, Top News, Yahoo: SEO

Google’s Advice On Using The New Canonical Tag

Mar 13, 2009 at 9:19am ET by Barry Schwartz

A month ago, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced they will be supporting a new canonical tag that allows you to tell search engines that page X is a duplicate page to page Z. In a way, it is a 301 redirect, without the physical redirect. The tag is incredibly powerful, as are 301 redirects and using this tag should be done with caution and slowly. Matt Cutts posted a new video explaining how one should go about using this tag, being that it is so new. Here is the video: [...]

Filed in: Google: SEO, Google: Webmaster Central, SEO: Blocking Spiders, SEO: Duplicate Content, SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites, SEO: Submitting & Sitemaps, SEO: Tagging, SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Google’s Matt Cutts Talks About Redirected Links & Nofollowed Links

Mar 11, 2009 at 9:28am ET by Barry Schwartz

Matt Cutts of Google has posted two short videos on the topic of links. One video answers how Google handles links that are 301 redirected and the other video answers how Google handles nofollowed links from authority sources. Here is Matt's video on 301 redirects where the question asked is does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects: His answer, if you don't want to watch it is. Typically yes, but Google deserves the right to pick which they pass. If all your links are through 301 redirects, then that looks suspicious. Matt's second video on nofollowed links answers two [...]

Filed in: Google: SEO, Link Building: General, SEO: General, SEO: Redirects & Moving Sites, SEO: Titles & Descriptions

Despite Inauguration, Google & Others Still Think It’s President Bush, Not President Obama

Jan 20, 2009 at 6:14pm ET by Danny Sullivan

President Barack Obama took office officially today plus launched a new White House web site as part of his transition. But the major search engines have yet to catch up with the power change. Google still lists President George W. Bush as being in power, sort of: The screenshot above shows what you get in a search for president of the united states at Google. A similar situation happens for a search on president: Ah, but it's only been a few hours -- surely Google will catch up with the changed page soon. Look closer. Google already knows the page has been updated. While [...]

Filed in: Features: Analysis, SEO: Titles & Descriptions, Search & Society: General, Top News

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