META Tags Testing - Abstract and Subject Metadata Test

Article posted by Edward Lewis, aka pageoneresults™ - System Administrator
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Continued from...
META Tags Abuse and Misuse - Metadata Structuring and Standards

Here is the second response that was received from the member removed. Keep in mind that all specifics have been replaced with word and character count statistics...

Edward

Thank you for your kind removal of any incriminating evidence in your post to your web site Internet marketing articles.

This is a perfect time to test your theories. If my positions drop then of course it would be due to the lack of additional information on my page.

I'm going to remove all instances of abstract, subject, and comment tags on my main page. But let me explain one thing first. My comment tags were there to keep track of the keyword orders I used. We all know comment tags are ignored or else we'd see a great deal of search results returned on Image Ready HTML, DWT, HTDig, and the other comment tags used by those WYSIWYG editors.

Positions in Google (manual search like I'm supposed to perform):

Admin Note: There were 16 keyword phrase searches performed with current positions. All phrases are four words or more with the exception of one which is 3 words. These are mostly regionally specific searches.

This is the entire head section of my current index page.

<head>
<title>6 words, 47 characters with spaces</title> (title modified 2003-08-18)
<meta name="keywords" content="54 words, 430 characters with spaces" />
<meta name="description" content="33 words, 223 characters with spaces" />
</head>

Now, we both have a record of what my positions were before we started this evolution. We shall both see what the new results are in a week or so.

I really do appreciate someone keeping tabs on the unethical people out there. I just know I'm not one of them.

I really wish people would do their homework prior to capturing a contract with some of those companies. My cousin wasn't aware that I own a development company. Due to his lack of keeping up with me, he contracted for $3k for a website optimized by some company. Problem is he doesn't own the domain and they can point it to another site if he doesn't renew. He paid for the work and someone else may benefit from it.

Thank you for pointing out the typo. The pixel sizes may not be as accessible as one may think, but since I actually used a separate style sheet, that style sheet can be overridden by a personal style sheet. Additionally, pixel sizes are the only font sizes that will transform gracefully across platforms. Still it is not my normal fashion. There's no excuse for it, just didn't keep up with my designer that did the redesign. I fixed the font issues you had concern with and used "em" which is more like my fashion.

I will get the other pages on my site fixed, but first I want to know if you are disallowing abstract and subject. I know in the circle you fashion yourself, the group says they are not allowed. However, my test will bare out the truth. As you probably noticed, my searches on Google were based upon the key phrases and how I expect people to find my site.

Googlebot actually hits my site daily. Below are the pages it pulled today along with ip and times.

I actually enjoy people putting me back a few steps. I've gotten into habits due to the organizations I work with that require being rectified when coming back to the world of regular search engines. Imagine working with the ********** one day and the next day you're working back in Corporate America. That's always a challenge for me, at least keeping the two work environments separate in my programming techniques.

Actually, I'm hoping to get back into a good light with your directory.

We always appreciate professionalism. Here is our response to the above reply...

Well, this tone is a little more appealing.

We never said that you were unethical, we just stated that the implementation of the tags you were utilizing did not meet our submission guidelines or our interpretation of the specifications that govern those tags.

Oh, we've had plenty of tests in regards to the comments tags and all of them resulted in "0" indexing as expected since they are treated as HTML markup.

Now, when it comes to the abstract and subject tag, we do not see them utilized as frequently as others and have not really tested them. When they are used, 9 out of 10 times they are being stuffed with a comma separated list of keyword phrases. We understand that the subject tag is to be formatted that way according to the DCMI. My understanding is that none of the major search engines index the abstract or subject metadata. There is too much room there for abuse and they would only be opening up their indexes to more problems as evidenced by the abuse of the keywords tag over the years.

We are not disallowing the utilization of metadata. We are declining submissions where these areas are being abused or misused, in most instances we are referring to keyword stuffing. Comma separated lists inside these tags (subject excluded) is an unacceptable practice from our perspective. Our research indicates that these tags serve no benefit from an SEO/SEM standpoint. There are applications where these tags are of value and we have no qualms with their use as long as standards are being followed.

We are really not affiliated with any group. Our directory, its structure, the content that it contains, were all fashioned from years of experience in the search engine optimization industry. We now refer to it as the search engine marketing industry as the other term can sometimes denote negativity.

We are most definitely looking forward to the results of your metadata tests as indicated in your reply. We wish to thank you for your professional response this time around and want to let you know that we hold no grudges. We are a group of professionals who are looking out for the visitors to our directory and the members that we have on board.

We sent one more reply with an issue that we forgot to mention...

***, there was one important item we forgot to address. When you removed this content from the html of your page, you shifted the balance of the text to html ratio. Since you have removed those tags referenced, there "should" be a shift in your positions. Based on the search queries you provided, I would assume a slight shift in some of the more competitive terms. Those lengthy regionally specific terms don't have much more room for improvement, maybe you'll get the #1 spots across the board for those after this shift in content. ;)

2003-08-20 - We were doing some further research and came across this interesting piece from the Literary Works of Cory Doctorow titled...

Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia

"If everyone would subscribe to such a system and create good metadata for the purposes of describing their goods, services and information, it would be a trivial matter to search the Internet for highly qualified, context-sensitive results: a fan could find all the downloadable music in a given genre, a manufacturer could efficiently discover suppliers, travelers could easily choose a hotel room for an upcoming trip.

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities."

Here is the final response and the results of the abstract and subject meta tags test that was received from the member removed...

Page 3 - META Tags Test Results - Abstract and Subject Metadata Testing

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