HTML Tag Relevance

How does Google treat bold and italic tags?

[thepcstore]

Hi,

As far as I'm aware, Google (and other search engines) use the <h1>Header</h1> tag for indexing pages. However, when using the spider tool on [ranks.nl ], I noticed it has an option to analyze <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> text. Do these tags have any influence on a pages raking?

Obviously writing a whole page in these tags will do no favours, but if they are used in moderation with page titles and file names, will it be advantagous to implement such tags into our pages?

Thanks,

Steve.

[Nick_W]

Well, I can offer no direct proof (but I'm sure others can) but here's my take on it:

Google is moving slowly but surely toward better indexing/relevance and that means that it should be taking a look at the placement and tag-context of words. Like you said about h1's.

If you use <strong> and <em> (<b> and <i> are deprecated as they have no relevance to content) your pages are better written and so with a bit of luck, by using these tags in the right way. To <strong>'ly emphasise or <em>phasize words or phrases it should add some weight to those terms.

Plus your users will benefit ;) and if you think about it: that's what the SE's want - Good, relevant results!

Nick

[thepcstore]

Cheers Nick!

I do believe Dreamweaver MX is one step ahead of us there, and already uses the <em> and <strong> tags, as oppose to <b> and <i>.

Steve.

[martinibuster]

I believe that the emphasis placed on these tags can fluctuate from algo to algo (month to month). Perhaps less so now. Based on the performance of my own site.

Although I haven't done a specific "search results analysis" for tag emphasis, I've done a fair amount of general analysis and discovered other, different, aspects of the algo; but no instance of overt tag emphasis.

The effect may be as a subtle factor for identifying relevance to a set of keywords, but not as an emphasis for determining the importance of the web site itself, which are determined by other factors.

In other words, there may be on the page factors that help determine what a page is all about. Then that is compared to what the rest of the site (inner pages) say that that page is about. Then that is compared to what inbound linkers say that that page is about. This is then mixed in with other factors which determine how important (not necessarily relevant) a page is, in the general WWW.

So yes, I believe it's advantageous, but maybe not to a great degree.

Did that make sense?

[chiyo]

I'm surprised that <em> is meant to replace <i>. I thought <i> was meant to indicate a foreign word, a title of something or a short quote, not an empahasis so much. It certainly does in traditional publishing. So if <i> is deprecated what is it's replacement for these things?

[Nick_W]

Hi Chiyo,

font-style: italic;

Nick

[korkus2000]

I thought <em> and <strong> where part of the original standard; no? I though <b> and <i> came along as a browser hack.

I do see future algos understanding the mark up and placing more weight on formatting. I think we will see engines spidering css shortly.

[Damian]

A short note to let you know I've added <em> and <strong> support to the tool mentioned in the first post, they are now detected as bold and italic tags.