Metadata Elements - Revisit-After META Tag



The revisit-after META Tag is not supported by any major search engines, it never was supported and probably never will be. It was developed for, and supported by, Vancouver Webpages and their local search engine searchBC.

searchBCsearchBC

searchBC is a search engine for British Columbia. It is fed by the VWbot_K Robot which confines its activities to sites in the .bc.ca domain, sites in the .com, .net and .org domains which are listed by InterNIC as being located in BC, and sites in the .ca domain which are not part of another Provincial domain.

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Examples of the Revisit-After META Tag

searchBC is a regional search engine which uses a number of common tags such as Keywords. Revisit is used as a hint for scheduling revisits.

<meta name="revisit-after" content="15 days">

The correct syntax for the META revisit-after is shown above and below. It is specified in the number of days. For example, if you need to specify an interval of 3 months, the correct syntax would be specified in days, not months...

<meta name="revisit-after" content="93 days">

The META revisit-after tag is specific to Vancouver Webpages searchBC. There are no other search engines that we are aware of who have created a reference lexicon called a profile to support the revisit-after directive. We've based this statement on years of metadata research.

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Obsolescent Metadata

The revisit-after META tag is obsolete according to the creator Vancouver Webpages...

Revisit Interval (Optional)
Controls how often your document is re-visited (by the searchBC robot).
Value = [integer][days|weeks|months]; e.g. "4 days". Obsolescent.

Admin Note: There is another variation of this tag that has been observed in use.

<meta name="revisit" content="15 days">

I don't think this particular variation of the revisit-after is valid syntax. There are no references to the meta name="revisit" in any of the authoritative documentation that is available for the revisit-after META Tag. The META Tag Builder provided by searchBC produces a revisit-after META tag that looks like this...

<meta name="revisit-after" content="15 days">

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The Revisit-After META Tag Myth Continues

During our years of metadata research, we've come across thousands of resources who discuss, recommend, suggest, mandate, and even generate a multitude of metadata elements. Many of those resources suggest the use of the revisit-after META tag and will even generate one for you based on the revisit interval.

Here is an example of how one webmaster resource promotes the use of the META revisit-after tag. We've linked the unique phrase to Google's search results to show you how this type of misinformation creates a snowball effect of someone's misinterpretation of the revisit-after META tag.

The Revisit META tag defines how often a search engine or spider should come to your website for re-indexing. Often this tag is used for websites that change their content often and on a regular basis. This tag can also be beneficial in boosting your rankings if search engines display results based on the most recent submissions.

The Revisit META Tag is used by search engines as a means to indicate how often a web page should be revisited for re-indexing. This tag is supported by many search engines and should be made use of if your content changes on a regular basis.

The above statements are NOT TRUE except in the case of Vancouver Webpages searchBC. It has no relevance with any other search engines that we are aware of. This type of published misinformation is how the revisit-after META tag myth continues.

The revisit-after META tag is of no value when it comes to developing metadata for a search engine marketing campaign. Adding the code for irrelevant metadata shifts the text to html content ratio which may be that one little thing that moves you into the top positions in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

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URI Submissions Declined

Due to the sheer volume of URI Submissions that we receive where the revisit-after META Tag is being used, we've decided to implement a rather strict guideline addressing the misuse of the tag. As of 2004 July, we are now declining all URI Submissions where this tag is being promoted and/or utilized.

2004-07-10 - Submission Guideline #11 - it contains the <meta name="revisit-after" content=""> metadata element. If your site contains any variation of the revisit-after META tag, we will decline the submission without further review. If you need to ask us why we will decline the submission, that may be further evidence that you may not qualify for a listing in the SEO Consultants Directory.

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More Information about Metadata

7.4.4 Metadata - This specification does not define a set of legal meta data properties. The meaning of a property and the set of legal values for that property should be defined in a reference lexicon called a profile. For example, a profile designed to help search engines index documents might define properties such as "author", "copyright", "keywords", etc.

Metadata Profiles - The profile attribute of the HEAD specifies the location of a meta data profile. The value of the profile attribute is a URI. User agents may use this URI in two ways:

  1. As a globally unique name. User agents may be able to recognize the name (without actually retrieving the profile) and perform some activity based on known conventions for that profile. For instance, search engines could provide an interface for searching through catalogs of HTML documents, where these documents all use the same profile for representing catalog entries.
  2. As a link. User agents may dereference the URI and perform some activity based on the actual definitions within the profile (e.g., authorize the usage of the profile within the current HTML document). This specification does not define formats for profiles.

 


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