Comments on: Why Metadata Matters

By: Nichola

Nichola — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:28:27 +0000

At SMX East today, Barry Schwartz (of Search Engine Land) has liveblogged that Yahoo! no longer include META keywords in their ranking algorithm either. Cris Perry of YahoO! confirms this in the Ask The Search Engines panel. http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-search-no-longer-uses-meta-keywords-tag-27303

By: theMediaFlow

theMediaFlow — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:56:00 +0000

Yes – I did see that Google post. Extremely interesting that they have officially qualified this. It has been conventional knowledge (as you rightly say) for at least a few years now. Google never do anything lightly so the cynic in me wonders why they have chosen to specifically qualify this now.

By: Bradley Holt

Bradley Holt — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:24:26 +0000

Sure, and as I said, good post! Yes, the PageRank algorithm is very complicated but the feature that defined its initial success over the competition was its focus on the credibility of *visible* hyperlinks. Hidden keywords have always played a minimal role in the PageRank algorithm and have played no role for at least a few years now. In fact, Google finally officially stated as much the other day:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

By: theMediaFlow

theMediaFlow — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:26:27 +0000

Thanks Bradley. Some valid points there. We’re definitely not advocating that site owners focus on metadata at the expense of any other data; more that it is still worth making the effort with this area for the reasons above.

By: Bradley Holt

Bradley Holt — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:48:37 +0000

Yes, metadata matters but I would encourage people to focus on visible data over hidden metadata (a microformats principle). Within a silo website or a trusted network hidden metatdata can be useful. However, once you hit the global web scale hidden metadata is too easily neglected (i.e. not kept up-to-date) or outright abused (e.g. keyword spamming). As a historical example, Google’s success was partially won by ignoring hidden keywords and focusing on visible hyperlinks between pages (PageRank). Visible metadata also provides the opportunity for authors and visitors to see and correct mistakes. Hidden metadata often falls out of sync with the content and becomes less-and-less useful.