ALT vs Comment Tags

[lavapies]

Hi folks,

I recently made a post asking whether keywords in one ALT tag (used to control Google snippet) would be considered spam.

The answer was clearly yes. However, the posts I've read concerning using Comment tags to do the same seem to conclude that this is OK and won't affect PR value.

My question is, what's the difference?

I'm trying to find some acceptable non-spam way of changing my Google snippet, which is cuurently coming from a PHP include file that makes up my left navbar.

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks.

[ciml]

Are you seeing the contents of comments in the snippet?

You can always remove the snippet [webmasterworld.com].

[lavapies]

Hi ciml,

No, I'm seeing the contents of my left navbar text (which is a separate PHP include file) .. just with contact info etc for my business.

What I'd like to be able to do is force a snippet that is a more accurate description of my site.

Haven't tried including comments yet, as I wasn't sure if it's seen as spamming or not. There seems to be some confusion on the issue.

I did however put keywords in a comment tag in the header of my page and my ranking with some inktomi sites went up dramatically.

[ciml]

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think Google uses the comment for its snippet.

If your META description matches the search phrase (i.e. all search words are in the META description), then Google will probably use that.

There's a thread on it by WebGuerilla from a month or two ago.

[lavapies]

Thanks ciml,

Will check it out the thread :-)

[luma]

I think, Google will ignore comments completely. Can't you present your main content first [diveintoaccessibility.org]? That way your content move up in the HTML (but not on screen) and your navigation moves down. Good for accessibility. Good for Google. :)

I also think, Google is more likely to display strong/bold or emphasized/italic text in their snippets. So if you can emphasize a word or two in the copy, it should help.