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Definition Tags in Google

Do they increase your ranking?

         

BeeDeeDubbleU

7:53 pm on Feb 17, 2004 (gmt 0)

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Does anyone know if Google now (or for that matter, in the past) scores KW text in definition tags higher? By this I mean stuff like <acronym> or the definitions markup tags - <dl><dt><dd>.

BeeDeeDubbleU

12:36 pm on Feb 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Is anyone able to help with this?

Hissingsid

2:01 pm on Feb 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

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<acronym> or the definitions markup tags - <dl><dt><dd>

Where have you come accross this?

Best wishes

Sid

BeeDeeDubbleU

2:47 pm on Feb 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



The subject came up in a sticky exchange with another member who was assisting me. I won't say who in case he gets pestered. But I am no HTML expert (I am no expert in anything really!) and I hadn't heard about them before. They sound like the kind of Tags that could be used by search engines in ranking algorithms.

There is more information on these here:

<dl><dt><dd>.
[w3.org...]

<acronym>
[w3schools.com...]

Solution1

4:01 pm on Feb 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

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I have a page on my site that uses definition tags in an index. The index contains links to specific pages, it looks like this (underscore _ is space):

Red
__widget 51 page
__widget 20 page
Blue
__widget 239 page
__widget 12 page

I'm often surprised that this page turned up in Google, instead of some more specific page.

I don't know whether Google is scoring keywords in it higher, but this index sure brings in traffic.

MedCenter

6:36 pm on Feb 19, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This would be very interesting. These new DHTML/CSS tags might be implemented, but I don't know.

Anyone?

seomike2003

6:44 am on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)



I'd throw you a link to a good site that explains this but everything I do in here seems to go against the TOS and is therefore edited or delete.

Go figure :)

BallochBD

3:24 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Mike, I had a look at this site but I can't find anything on it. What section is it in?

aaronjf

3:57 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have been pooring through some old post graduate papers of Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page on Google - one of which "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". In all of their papers, that were published to the web, they made fairly extensive use of the <dl><dt><dd> markup.

Now even though most of these papers are 8 - 10 years old, you have to figure that they would follow a format they believed to be important. Following this line of thought you can see where the idea for H1 H2 Bold Intalic etc came into their minds.

It stands to reasons that like an OS, most companies don't change the core up very much over the life of an OS. They just keep piling on top of it.

I would bet the <dl><dt><dd> tags do get you some points. I would not say a lot, but some.

pageoneresults

4:01 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Any markup used properly is going to score points. Just follow the guidelines for their use and you'll be that much further ahead. Wrapping everything in definition tags is not an answer to ranking higher in the search engines.

Definition lists vary only slightly from other types of lists in that list items consist of two parts: a term and a description. The term is given by the DT element and is restricted to inline content. The description is given with a DD element that contains block-level content.

For example, if you were building a Glossary of Terms, utilization of the definition lists is important.

BallochBD

4:31 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



<Any markup used properly is going to score points. Just follow the guidelines for their use and you'll be that much further ahead. Wrapping everything in definition tags is not an answer to ranking higher in the search engines.>

I would very much doubt that any markup would score points but the question posed at the beginning of this thread was "Do they increase your ranking?"

I don't think anyone was suggesting that they were the answer.

pageoneresults

4:40 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I would very much doubt that any markup would score points.

Why would you doubt that? It is not a matter of looking at one particular tag element. Its a matter of looking at all the elements being used and how they are being used, or abused.

Do they increase your ranking?

Does it matter? If you have markup that belongs in a definition list, then it should go into a definition list.

I don't think we'll ever know the answer to this particular question as it would be difficult to test.

I can tell you from experience that definition lists have a place, especially when building glossaries or pages that have defined terms.

P.S. List items have been proven to have more relevancy than other elements. Definition lists are a form of list items.

BallochBD

4:50 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Fair do's!

aaronjf

5:51 pm on Feb 20, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Think of it like this... Look at where Google started - a college project. A the time of Google's creation that was their point of referance in life.

Was there every any mistakes in structure, grammer, or anything else you did not get counted off for when writing a paper... Building a web site is a lot like writing a paper. Would it not stand to reason that proper coding and structure of a web page would maybe not get you points. After all siting other papers and bodies of work is where they got the idea for PR....

Personally I am of the opinion that Google grades your site under a lot of the same rules, just expounded upon, that a prof would grade a paper.

a_chameleon

7:31 pm on Feb 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



List items have been proven to have more relevancy than other elements. Definition lists are a form of list items.

I recently had a site leap from virtual obscurity to #1 in G, (had abandoned it, product was no longer) during the post-Austin-to-Brandy period, that used lists in a framed menu on each page, and after a lot of puzzling, asking other members and perusing log files to watch which pages Gbot liked to re-visit; at the end of the day it was almost certainly the "list" that seemed to make the site considered more relevant.

Additionally, in my categories, the same holds true. While not always in the same ranking slot, sites with lists are more consistently ranked well and more "dance proof".

Just my 3 cents.

BallochBD

9:44 pm on Feb 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This is becoming more interesting all the time ...

SyntheticUpper

10:08 pm on Feb 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Good heavens - here we go, now we're all going to have definition pages.

Goodbye Oxford English Dictionary, Websters, Harvard, Cambridge Editions etc. When I next want the definition of a south american piebald squat, I, and the rest of the Google-race is going to get some pie-eyed, oxymoronic, cobbled together 'definition' from one of my fellow WW posters.

Now that's progress.

P.S. what's the link again ;)

p.p.s. In all seriousness, Google is becoming to human knowledge what M*cDonalds has become to food - it worries me.

p.p.s. And to dampen your obvious enthusiasm BallochBD, what's to stop me defining haggis as an inedible dish from a nation of poor rugby players? A harsh example - but if I've got the PR, what's to stop it? And much, much worse could be 'defined' - perhaps I could 'define' one race as being inferior to another?

Blo*dy dangerous Google gimmick IMO - they should pull it before it is abused and causes them trouble.

BallochBD

7:59 am on Feb 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Tch, tch, how sad. I will resist the temptation to bite at your racist bait apart from quoting our national bard, Robert Burns ...

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!"

Hissingsid

9:39 am on Feb 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



M*cDonalds

There's no * in McDonalds. I think that this shorthand version comes from English census takers shorthand in the 18th Century.

I wonder if this definition list stuff is related to (you guessed it) semantics. If the markup is word:definition then this is very strong from a semantics analysis point of view.

Best wishes

Sid