g1smd - 12:53 pm on Jul 7, 2008 (gmt 0)

Browsers make no usage of the description tag, so it is irrelevant whether they see it or not.

Showing Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Live, all the same meta description as each other, and one that totally represents what that page is all about, is just about as far as a site should need to go to be compliant. Browsers make absolutely no usage of that meta data whatsoever, so it does not matter what they are given, or not.

This is the second time in a week that I have disagreed with Google's stance on something -- the other was when they said that blocking whole areas of the world by IP was against their guidelines. They later revised that, to say that blocking whole areas of the world was OK just as long as all users and bots from that area were equally blocked.

At the top of the page, I have accessibilility links to "skip navigation" etc. On some newer sites, those are only included on pages served to real browsers, and are omitted when Google/Yahoo/Ask/Live call by. Seems like that might be frowned upon too.

Additionally, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, all other browsers that are not (IE5 or IE6 or IE7), and all bots that are allowed by .htaccess, get one style sheet, and anything that really is (IE5 or IE6 or IE7) gets a different stylesheet with all the IE-specific kludges within. Opera or Safari claiming to be IE get fed the non-IE stylesheet too.