Is it ok to use '.' in the meta tags?

[lorax]

I have a client in the semi-conductor industry and many of the pages are very specific about a product of 0.010mm. I've used these particular specs in the title, keyword and description tags.

Google has come and visited but it hasn't really crawled the site. Now I know that could be for a number of reasons but it occurred to me that Google might not like the '.' or may consider it the end of a sentence - so I thought I'd better double check with you.

[grnidone]

Period should not be a problem. Google sees what you see when you 'View Source' in your browser.

Also understand meta tags are not heavily weighted.

I'd check your internal site linking. How is each page of your site linked to other pages?

Is your site dynamically generated from a database? If so, do you see '?' or '%' in the url? If so, those symbols in the urls might be causing Google to stumble.

Also, how big are your pages? Does it take a long time for them to load? Google likes small pages.

Do you have a robots.txt page for the site? If so, what does it say? If it says something like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

then you are telling all spiders not to crawl the site.

[lorax]

Thanks for the reply grnidone,
I've gone over the basics and am now off into the typo hunting and "what if" mode.

The pages are static and light (less than 30Kb on ave with images). The other bots haven't had any problems and Google has crawled some pages but hasn't even gone through 10% of the site (only 130 pages). So I'm a bit perplexed.

[richardb]

Hi Lorax

Throw in a site map and forget about the G spidering, new site, et al issues.

Rich

[HyperGeek]

Besides the fact that Google pretty much ignores META tags.

[g1smd]

Run the site through [validator.w3.org...] looking for obvious tag typos and nesting errors.

It can matter sometimes.

[too much information]

HyperGeek, I'm not so sure Google is ignoring the Meta tags.

I tried to start a thread on this but was blocked... hmmmm...

I found two sites ranking in the top 5 of my best keyword combination and both only have text in the title tag and the meta keywords tags.

I ran a keyword density on both and they come up around 80% for the term WITH the keywords and 1% without. I even checked the cache for these two sites and there was nothing different between the cache and the live site.

I wonder if maybe Google is using the Keywords when there is no other text? Either way both were scoring higher than a bunch of sites with up to 20% density without the keywords.

It was enough to make me adjust my meta tags! ;o)

tmi

[GrinninGordon]

too much information

I saw this too. But the site came and went. So I guess Google will use Meta if they have no other choice (like with a 100% Flash front end), but may not rank such sites so high.

[jdMorgan]

lorax,

You might throw in a few variants - like "10 micron" if your are worried about the period in 0.010mm being seen as a "full stop." Not sure about other countries, but when my hardware buddies and I are discussing process technology and feature size here in the U.S., it's in microns, not thousandths of millimeters.

Jim

[lorax]

Very good point jdMorgan - thanks all.

[Pricey]

Period

Nay! - Full stop :P

[lorax]

>> Nay! - Full stop

Are you saying it is full stop? How do you know?

[brotherhood of LAN]

" and > is what I'd stay away from in those tags, just for any semi-daft parser that thinks it's the ending of a tag. Especially those smaller cut and paste engines that people run on their sites......

Another vote for periods/full stops being OK here. I've seen essays inside meta descriptions, they seem ok :)

[HyperGeek]

Too Much Information,

Google probably based your listing on the <TITLE>you gave the page</TITLE>. The title holds alot of weight with most spider-based engines.

It is possible that words placed in META tags are scanned as part of the overall page, thus factoring in to a density reading - but, to Google, I doubt very much that they are considered anything more than part of the page's content...making no difference whether those words are in a META tag or even in the body of the page.

[Petrocelli]

0.010mm

Don't forget about old Europe: "0,010 mm" (comma, space)

[GoogleGuy]

That wouldn't bother me, lorax. Sounds like it's natural to use '.' like that. I'd say not to worry about it.

[Pricey]

Are you saying it is full stop? How do you know?

Its a full stop. I know, because I'm always right :P

[g1smd]

Why not try some searches with the various terminologies suggested above, and see what sites come up? Could give quite a few ideas for other things to include.