New standard in site descriptions?

[WallaceCleaver]

In looking at the HTML of a few web sites I have noticed that they are not only putting their site descriptions in a META tag, but also including it in comment tags. For example

<meta name="description" content="Widget World - Our widgets are the best!">

<!-- Widget World - Our widgets are the best! -->

Is this some new way of doing things or just an odd choice by a few webmasters?

[Mohamed_E]

I have never understood why anyone believes that comment tags can possibly have any effect.

Put yourself in the shoes of the developer of a search engine. You grab the file and parse it according to the HTML spec. Comments don't count so you obviously discard them.

[HitProf]

Is this some new way of doing things or just an odd choice by a few webmasters?

It's more a very *old* way, even used to work sometimes :)

[JayC]

WallaceCleaver, you might want to read through this thread [webmasterworld.com], which in spite of its title ("META Tags") mostly contains discussion about comments tags. The concensus here (in that and other threads) is that they are ignored completely by major search engines today.