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 indexes the content of that tag. (And to be clear, I looked before writing this article. In short order, this article itself, along with others, will appear because they’ll make use of that word).

During the session last week at SMX East, when Yahoo said it no longer supported this tag, several in the audience said they didn’t believe it. I was kind of struck. You’ve got a search representative flat-out saying they don’t do something, but no one wants to believe them? How things have changed. Sure, I can see distrust on some controversial issues (such as whether Google really does not count nofollowed links out of Wikipedia). But why would Yahoo lie about something like meta keywords support?

To be clear, I don’t think Yahoo was deliberately lying. The representative was probably confused in some way. Similarly over at Bing, despite them NOT supporting the tag (it’s not mentioned here) and never having done so since they launched their own search technology, they recently blogged much advice about using the tag.

As I commented about this:

That reads like someone got a copy of really old SEO advice and decided to put it out there regardless of what Bing actually does. I mean, my head hurts, but not everyone cared about commas or not. And no one had this 874 character limit. I mean, if you went over, it was no big deal. And the don’t repeat more than 4 times? According to what. Microsoft never, ever had its own guidelines like this.”

It’s a good reminder to the search reps. In many ways, you occupy god-like status on issues relating to SEO. Everything you write, everything you say will be fully believed by some. And if you’re not correct, you’ll confuse people and cause others to lose faith in you. If you don’t know, don’t say — or qualify: “I’m not sure” or “I’ll check on that.”

Postscript: Yahoo’s sent me this:

What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.

Words that appear in any other part of documents, including the body, title, description, anchor text etc., will take priority in ranking the document – the re-occurrence of these words in the meta keyword tag will not help in boosting the signal for these words.  Therefore, keyword stuffing in the keyword tag will not help a page’s recall or ranking, it will actually have less effect than introducing those same words in the body of the document, or any other section.

However, when no other ranking signal is present, unique words that only appear in the meta keyword tag section of documents can still be used to recall these documents.

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 support the tag. Google has never supported it and in fact clarified this again in a special post last month. See Google: Stop Suing Over The Meta Keywords Tag, We Don’t Use It for more about that.

NOTE: See our follow-up post, Sorry, Yahoo, You DO Index The Meta Keywords Tag.

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:

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 questions. The first, does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? The second, does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed?

His answers, if you don’t want to watch the video are:

(Q) Does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? (A) Matt said the nofollow is used very rarely on the web, relative to all the links on the web. He said it is “miniscule” compared to all the links.

(Q) Does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed? (A) Google doesn’t take into account the nofollowed Wikipedia links. But people may find your resource via Wikipedia and link to you without a nofollow from their site, so that might help you.

Matt did add that if a site has a lot of trust, like Wikipedia, does deserve the right to take the nofollow off. But it is up to the site to decide if they want to take off that nofollow tag. Matt goes as far to say that Google would support Wikipedia if they want to put into their policy a way of removing nofollow links from trusted editors and their content.

Plus, Peter Linsley from Google Image Search has a video up at the Google Webmaster Central blog with his presentation from SMX West on Google Images:

Postscript: Matt posted another video today, answering why Google has not yet built a ranking report in Webmaster Tools. The quick answer is that it is a resources thing. Google is constantly improving Webmaster Tools and adding features like the canonical tag element, which they think are more important then simple rank checking. Here is the video answer:

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 the title may say “President George W. Bush,” the description says “WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States.”

What’s going on? In this case, Google is using the title for the White House web site that is provided from the Open Directory Project here. Because the searches above use the word “president” in them, Google in its mistaken wisdom has decided that a third party title for the web site is more accurate than the site’s own title.

There’s a solution — the NOODP meta tag. Using that prevents Open Directory descriptions from being used and though Google’s help document isn’t clear, it should also suppress the ODP title as well. Hopefully, the Obama team will install the NOODP tag on the site soon.

Things are better on the Google front when it comes to a search for white house:

There, you can see Google is using both a current title and description for the page.

Over at Yahoo, it has yet to catch up with the times either for a search on president of the united states or white house, as shown below:

The same is true at Microsoft for white house and president of the united states.

By the way, curious about what will happen with the “miserable failure” search that was ranking the US president’s home page number one for those words when Bush was in power? My Bush: Fix Your “Miserable Failure” Googlebomb Legacy Before Obama Takes Office article has background on the situation.

Today, I noted that the old location for Bush’s biography is not being redirected to a new location. I suspect that should finally kill the bomb for good, at least for “failure,” where it is still going off at Google right now:

That should also stop it for “miserable failure” on Yahoo and Microsoft, where it still ranks Bush tops.

Of course, the change also breaks anyone over the years who has linked to Bush’s bio for educational or other non-political purposes. It’s also a change I don’t think was deliberately done. All US presidential biographies were moved to new pages (George Washington was here but is now here, with no redirection from the old location to the new one). That means lots of broken links out there (nearly 5,000 of them, according to Yahoo).

Postscript: Jason Kottke and Dave Naylor note how little the Obama administration is currently blocking from search engines compared to the old White House web site.

Like other search engines, Google already distinguishes between various types of content. You can search specifically for images, videos, books, blog posts, and so forth. Google has separate search engines for each. But two recent changes suggest that Google is improving its ability to classify different types of content that’s gathered from ordinary web pages. Search Engine Roundtable points to a discussion on WebmasterWorld about the addition of dates at the beginning of some search results — something Michael Gray spotted in mid-September. From my personal experience, this seems to be happening mostly on content that Google can identify as blog posts and news articles — but not exclusively on those types of content.

And speaking of identifying types of content, Google Operating System points out that Google is starting to show special forum-related information in search results when it can identify that the result comes from a message board. Author Alex Chitu suggests this could mean new advanced search options in the future:

This new feature shows that Google is able to automatically classify web pages and to extract relevant information. Once Google starts to show data for other kinds of web pages, we can expect to see an option to restrict the search results to a certain category (forums, reviews, blogs, news articles).

The screenshot above has examples of both cases, the top showing dates in the snippets, and the bottom showing forum information.

I know. I know. Seasoned search engine optimization (SEO) professionals might yawn and roll their eyes when the subject of meta-tag optimization comes up, as they might think, "Meta-tag optimization is SO 1990s."

Personally, I think meta-tag content gets a bad rap because, in the past, many SEO professionals and website owners exploited meta-tags to achieve undeserved search engine visibility. As a result, the tags’ content was devalued in favor of other criteria. Overall, though, if you look at the big picture, meta-tag abuse contributed to the evolution of better, more accurate ways for determining the "aboutness" of web documents.

As an SEO professional, I optimize meta-tag content because there are multiple reasons to use meta-tags on web pages and other files, apart from ranking purposes.

Meta-tag content and relevancy

Some commercial web search engines use meta-tag content to determine page relevancy. Some do not. Most of the time on a text-based document, meta-tag descriptions and keywords are not used to determine whether or not a page ranks. Search engines have long evolved to use other on-the-page and off-the-page criteria, as many SEO professionals know.

Due to the emergence and ubiquity of blended search results, many SEO professionals need to re-think their meta-tag optimization viewpoints. What file types are appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs) for targeted keyword phrases? Optimization strategies for text files differ slightly from optimization from non-text files.

Meta-tag keywords and descriptions become more important when the search engines are not able to determine (or have a difficult time determining) the "aboutness" of a file, such as a video file. In this situation, a keyword-focused meta-tag description can make or break search engine visibility.

If I am able to help implement SEO best practices at a company, I try to make metadata optimization for all file types part of a normal process. Once copywriters, graphic designers, video and audio producers, and web developers make it a habit to produce high-quality metadata content, it does not seem like a daunting task.

Going back and re-optimizing (or initially optimizing) 2,500 video files can seem like a daunting task. But people have to start somewhere, and one properly optimized video file is better than no optimized video files. I might have ten people optimize ten video files per day, minimum. I always begin with the video files that have the greatest impact on achieving business goals. All too often, management needs to see some relatively fast results before committing staff time to full implementation.

If everything goes as planned, within a few weeks, the optimization for those files is complete, and now the optimization procedure has become a habit at the company. If I am working with a company that has a great web analytics package, I always measure the ROI of video optimization.

Meta-tag descriptions and search behavior

Since some major search engines use meta-tag descriptions when displaying a page’s (or file’s) listing, it is important to write meta-tag descriptions that accomplish the following:

• Encourage searchers to click on the link to your web page

• Reinforce content that is already available (and visible to users) on the page
• Help to obtain top search engine positioning in the search results that use meta-tags to determine relevance

How listings are displayed in search results is very, very important. I often feel as if search engine advertisers have a better grasp of display effectiveness than SEO professionals. Snippet length and term highlighting greatly affect a listing’s clickability.

For example, for navigational searches where users wish to go to a site’s home page or a specific page on your site, smaller snippets are often more effective. On informational searches where searchers desire information irrespective of where the information might be found, longer snippets are more effective (What are you looking for? An eye-tracking study of information usage on web Search – PDF version).

With navigational queries, the destination is important, and the URL provides a clear indicator of the final destination. Some Google research showed that 17% of mobile queries were navigational (A Large Scale Study of Wireless Search Behavior: Google Mobile Search – PDF version). With informational queries, however, the URL becomes less important to searchers because the desired information is the main target, not necessarily the URL.

Which pages on your site are better pages to display in response to navigational queries? Which pages on your site are better pages to display in response to informational or transactional queries? Understanding your target audience’s intent with various keyword phrases will help you create better pages and more effective listings, leading to a more positive user experience.

Often, search engines do not take listing descriptions from the meta-tag description. They might take the listing description from other on-the-page content, or use a combination of the two. For this reason, I prefer to have meta-tag content reinforce the most important keyword phrases on the web page. However, if I know that the main searcher goals are navigational, for example, I will try and keep the meta-tag description short to help searchers achieve their goals more easily.

Meta tags and site search engines

The meta-tag keyword attribute often gets a bad rap because many of the commercial web search engines do not use this content to determine relevancy. Nonetheless, the commercial web search engines are not the only search engines in existence. Many sites utilize their own site search engine. The content in the keywords meta-tag can make site search engine results more accurate, which is exactly what users want.

Conclusion

Many website owners still cling to the mistaken belief that meta-tag content alone can make or break a ranking in the web search results. Heck, my co-author had to persistently correct a university lecturer about this common misconception only a few weeks ago, which he found rather frustrating. I understand his frustration about the narrow view of meta-tag usage, especially since optimization strategies have evolved.

Nevertheless, metadata certainly has an effect on long-term search engine visibility and ROI. I always try to optimize meta-tag content based on usability testing and observing search behaviors during those tests. Web analytics data also provides helpful information. Your best bet? Do not ignore meta-tag optimization, but rather try and understand its role in the big picture.

Shari Thurow is the Founder and SEO Director at Omni Marketing Interactive and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Matt Cutts of Google has written two posts on the topic of SEO:

• Detecting more “undetectable” webspam
• The anatomy of a search result

The first, Detecting more “undetectable” webspam, should trigger some heated comments at his blog. It shows how he was able to find what was claimed to be “undetectable” cloaking and web spam. Matt then issues his warning to webmasters:

More generally, if someone is trying to manipulate Google by deceptive cloaking, it means that a webserver is returning different content to Googlebot than to users. That’s a condition that can be checked for by algorithms or manually, and such cloaking is certainly not “undetectable.” For cloaking to be completely “undetectable,” it would have to be like that Steven Wright joke: “Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates.” And a cloaking script that gave users and Googlebot exactly duplicate pages would be a bit pointless.

There are currently over thirty comments at Matt’s blog, I assume you will be able to find over a hundred by the end of today.

In Matt’s other post, The anatomy of a search result, he breaks down how the search result snippet works. He describes in the video below each of the following components: the title, the description, the plus expansion box, the URL, how Google bolds keywords, the cache link, similar pages link, and, Google notes, Site Links and the more results link. Here is the video:

The Google Webmaster Central Blog described what makes for a good meta description versus what makes for a bad meta description. Meta descriptions are a special tag that you place within the source code of your html page. They can be used by search engines for ranking purposes as well as for being displayed within the search result pages.

The tag looks like this when you view the source code:

<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”informative description here”>

The Google blog post describes key attributes of what Google considers making a good meta description, factors its says may increase the odds that your meta description tag will get used. They include:

• Unique meta descriptions on each page of your site
• Show facts about the content on the page that are not represented in the title
• Make the description easy to read
• Dynamic sites can dynamically generate descriptive meta descriptions easily
• Make sure your descriptions are quality and represent the content on the page

For more on meta descriptions and titles, check out our SEO archives on titles and descriptions.

Google’s Dan Crow announced today that the unavailable_after META tag is now live and operational.

Google To Add “Unavailable After” META Tag from about two weeks ago, explains in detail more about this tag and how it can be used.