Key Word Searches and Meta-tags

<i>> Most of the sites that I am creating now are frames-enabled. That means</i>
<i>> the index.htm page typically offers only frames formating information --</i>
<i>> although I also include some limited introductory information within the</i>
<i>> <noframe> tags.</i>
<i>></i>
<i>> If a frames page consists of two frames, you are looking at 3 html</i>
<i>> documents to create what appears to be one page. If you have three frames,</i>
<i>> its 4 docs.etc.</i>
<i>></i>
<i>> My 1st question is, on which page(s) should I put the <META> keyword tags?</i>
<i>> On the index.html, the mainwindow.html, all of them?</i>
<i>></i>

I can only speak for Infoseek and even our story will be changing in
this area over time.

Currently we will include in our index each individual page that is sent
to us for inclusion in our service. So if you send in your index.html page
that is the one we will download and index and therefore that is where
you must include the META tags. If you send in the individual frame
pages to us then we will include each one individually, which could lead
users to an individual frame instead of the the full FrameSet, which is
not necessarily desireable. Eventually we will have a method of grabbing
all of the pages in a FrameSet and indexing them as if they were the one
main page containing the FRAMESET tag, but that is probably a few months
down the road for Infoseek.

<i>> Also, I have recently (yesterday) rated MacWare Revue with PIC's SurfSafe</i>
<i>> system. They provided me with the following specially coded <META> tag:</i>
<i>></i>
<i>> <META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS 1.0</i>
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; "&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.classify.org/safesurf/">http://www.classify.org/safesurf/</a>"&gt;http://www.classify.org/safesurf/&lt;/a&gt;" l r (SS~~000 1 SS~~100 1))'&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Any thoughts on where I should put it? Index.html or mwrintro.html -- the&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; main frame window doc.?&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;

I have no knowledge of what this tag is used for by the people who will
be paying attention to it, so I have no way of answering that question.

I will add, though, that including the double and single quotes like
this in the META tags Infoseek pays attention to (keywords, description)
will cause unpredictable results. I haven't tried it so I am not sure
exactly what will happen, but I know we did not code it to handle that case.

&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; A final related question. How many separate elements can I add inside a&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; single META tag? Here's an example of combining your keywords META and&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; SafeSurfs:&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;lt;META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Apple Macintosh shareware freeware reviews&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; software MacWare Revue" http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS 1.0&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; "&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.classify.org/safesurf/">http://www.classify.org/safesurf/</a>"&gt;http://www.classify.org/safesurf/&lt;/a&gt;" l r (SS~~000 1 SS~~100 1))'&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Is this permissable? Your insight appreciated.&lt;/i&gt;
&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;

This is not permissable. Make each element a seperate META tag.

&amp;lt;META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="Apple Macintosh shareware freeware reviews
software MacWare Revue"&amp;gt;
&amp;lt;META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS 1.0
"&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.classify.org/safesurf/">http://www.classify.org/safesurf/</a>"&gt;http://www.classify.org/safesurf/&lt;/a&gt;" l r (SS~~000 1 SS~~100 1))'&amp;gt;

Actually I am not sure if this is permissable in HTML (I doubt it, though).
I do know that, depending on the order, Infoseek will not find the correct
information if you stick them all into one tag.

One more note on Infoseek's use of the META keywords element. We noticed a
lot of people loading in hundreds of the same term into this field and often
using many words that are not related to the page at all. Our search engine
works best when the pages succinctly describe the concepts behind the site.
Adding lots of repeated words, and especially unrelated words, results in
poorer performance on all searches and is severely frowned upon.

We therefore implemented a test in the META keywords tag only. If the same
word (regardless of case) appears more than 7 times in the keywords section
then the entire keywords section is discarded and not used. The rest of
the page, including the META description element, will still be used, but
you will lose the advantage of specifying keywords.

So please do not throw in many copies of the same word into the keywords
element. You will only be hurting yourself. We will be adding a note
explaining this to Infoseek Guide this week.

btw - Infoseek Guide 2.0 is now available and is really snazzy. try it out!

Andy Bensky
Infoseek Corp.
&lt;a href="<a href="http://guide.infoseek.com/">http://guide.infoseek.com/</a>"&gt;http://guide.infoseek.com/&lt;/a&gt;

----
The Internet Marketing Discussion List is sponsored this week by:
Decisive makes surveying by e-mail &amp;amp; Internet easy! &amp;lt;&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.decisive.com">http://www.decisive.com</a>"&gt;http://www.decisive.com&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt;

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message: ShelHoro@aol.com: "press contacts"
• Previous message: bill@ipub.com: "Calling vs. online"

Return to Internet Marketing Home Page

Search the archives

Post a message to this group by filling in the form below.