Description for tables in source code.

Is this important?

[CygnusX1]

Hi all,

I love this website!

I had someone tell me that if you put a description before each table or paragraph that it helps in your listings on the search engines. For example the keyword “Cars”:

<!- - big cars and small cars sold here - -!>

Then you add the rest of the paragraph that is shown on the website. The “<!- - cars big and small - -!>” only shows in the source code, not on the website itself, so the search engines is all that will see it.

My 6 questions are this:

Is this spam or not?

Does the keyword cars in that small description shown above, help the website in its listings on search engines for the keyword “Cars”?

What is the name of this code at the beginning and the end of the following <!- - cars - -!>?

Is it worth more then the keyword meta tag and description tag?

If so how much?

Lastly if it helps how many times should you use it on each page?

Thanks for your replies!

[Perplexed]

I was always under the impression that Google and other SEs ignored anything inside comment tags. If it didn't everyone would have masses of them.

I could be wrong but I think their only use is to help split up areas of code to make it easier to find your way around it.

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, CygnusX1, glad you like it here. ;)

The code you asked about is the HTML comment tag, and there's no evidence whatsoever of it being worth anything at all. The only value it has is to the webmaster to remind what the section is, or as in programming, as documentation in case someone else should work on the project.

As a matter of fact, too much in the way of comments can be a detriment because of increasing the size of the HTML code, which you'll want to keep as small as possible in proportion to the visible text.

As far as meta tags go, they really don't carry a whole lot of weight nowadays. The keywords meta tag is practically useless except, again, as a reminder to the webmaster, and the meta description carries some weight with some search engines and is what some provide as the site description in searches. So it pays to use it, keeping it down to 25-30 words and including the main keyword phrase once or twice and making sure that it's appealing to people searching.

[CygnusX1]

Thanks very much for the help.

Ya'll have a great day!

[tedster]

Your informant was a few years out of date -- content tags with keywords did work for some search engines in their earlier years. But it was so easy to spam with that method that the SEs had to ignore content tags just out of self defense.

[Robert Charlton]

<!- - cars - -!>

Just as a PS to the above good advice, comment tags should begin with "<!--" and end with "-->"

I think the the "!" before the ending ">" will get you in trouble, at least on some browsers. It's definitely not correct code.

[claus]

ahem... *cough*... hrm... the example below is valid HTML 4.0 directly from the W3C website:

<TABLE border="1" 

summary

="This table summarizes travel expenses
incurred during August trips to San Jose and Seattle">

<CAPTION>

Travel Expense Report

</CAPTION>

<TR>
<TH>...

Link: [w3.org...]

Note "summary" and <CAPTION> .. it's intended to be "displayed" by braille readers and speech synthesizers, etc. so it's not a comment tag, it's part of the content. Don't know if is read and indexed by SE's, somebody will find out sooner or later i guess. And, being content, it should be indexed as well.

But... it's a direct answer to the thread subject: It is important - for people with visual disabilities this is a great help.

/claus

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edit:

This should have been the link: [w3.org...]

The first link is for the recommendations, but the finished document (above link) has similar examples.

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edit2: removed this:
"It will not be rendered in a "visual user agent" though (your common browser that is)."

- as the document do in fact allow a visual user agent to display both summary and caption.