META description tag

FAST indexing it!

[sun818]

Hi, I am noticing for some of my pages with little content, the META description tag is used as the snippet that is displayed in the results. Do you customize your pages to take advantage of this? I also notice this with MSN.

[heini]

Hey sun818, sorry I missed your post before. True is, Fast indexes the meta desc. On ATW they are generally displayed beneath the snippet, starting with a yellow/orange

Description:

.
Actually it's amazing to see how many pages do not have a meta desc at all...

Lycos uses the meta description as snippet. So that's what the user gets to see: Definitely worthwile to optimize for clickthrough from serps.

Of course it's a different question of how the description is weighted in ranking. Fact is there are many top listings which have not decriptions at all.

[tbear]

I've found it always useful (and surprising) to use the facilities built into pages whenever possible, like description, content and keyword metas. I doubt anyone would penalise for it and I'm sure there are various places where it will do me good.
IMHO
<added>but to use them correctly and intelligently!</added>

[Hollywood]

What's the deal with this title?

<meta name="description" content="Worldwide keyword1, keyword2, andkeyword3 for computer, keyword4, keyword5, andkeyword6">

Would this work or be a benefit? (The and connected to the keywords on this description... <snip>)

Thanks

Hollywood man

[edited by: heini at 6:49 pm (utc) on Dec. 12, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics please. [/edit]

[markd]

Not to contradict 'the honourable members', but i have found the opposite to be the case!

Pages which had faily good 'keyphrase' description tags were being completely overlooked in SERP descriptions in favour of the first 10-15 words of body copy.

After changing my pages to reflect this, my pages have gone up considerably in results.

Unless of course Fast has changed their approach in the last 4 weeks or so!

[creative craig]

Fast also uses my description tag for the snippet, I always have tried to make a good description tag.. but now it seems to be more important than ever.. well for me that is :)

Craig

[Rumbas]

Hollywood, it's probably just a typo ;)

[Hollywood]

I do not think this is a typo, but maybe, if not a typo would this benefit anything, having it laid out this way, ..... anyone? It appears his results are working quite well

[heini]

Hollywood, obviously it does not work at all, since a search for any of those keywords "andkeyword" doesn't bring up anything.
Which is an interesting fact. Going to do some more testing later on. Thanks for bringing this up!

[Hollywood]

I think it is interesting though, the fact that this guy gets top ratings with these typos makes me wonder. The type of business he is in is competitive online and I just wonder if this is benefiting him?

Hollywood