XHTML Formatting and Meta Tags

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XHTML Formatting and Meta Tags

Not a huge issue but why can't Brett's Sim Spider read my meta tags?

steveb

10:26 am on Sep 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

So I go to Brett's Sim Spider tool, type in my URL, and it says:
"Spider meta desc: No description available."
"Spider meta keywords:" <shows a blank space>

I go to my page and change the ending of the description and keywords meta tags from:

" />

Then the Sim Spider tools reads my description and keyword tags fine. I thought search engines were reading the meta tags okay with that XML rules / there, but Brett's Sim Spider tool doesn't. Is there something I'm missing here?

tedster

12:33 pm on Sep 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

Wow. That does sort of indicate that "some" spiders may not read your meta description tags.

Do you see your pages' meta descriptions in the major search engines that use descriptions?

andreasfriedrich

12:37 pm on Sep 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

Try using

<meta name="" content=""></meta>

which is valid XHTML as well.

bird

12:38 pm on Sep 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

Steve, do you have the correct (and complete) doctype declarations present in your pages?

I don't think that this is an indicator of how any real search engine will or will not find the relevant tags. It looks more like someone took a shortcut when writing the validator... ;)

steveb

10:19 pm on Sep 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

tedster, I don't pay much attention to anybody but Google, but Google does see my tages as does FAST.

bird, I'm not sure. I don't have a
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> tag like that but I otherwise validate just fine. I'm just wondering because I've always scored surprisingly poorly on FAST, even though it is showing my meta description. I'm just wondering if even though it shows it, having the "/" might be hurting me in terms of readibility or something.

I suppose it doesn't matter either way... I'm probably actually being read by the spiders; and on the other hand I could just delete the "/". The thing is, I'm anal, I figure applying that XML formatting is a good thing, but I'm a front Page user so I have no clue why. :)