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Is this advisable or will Google penalise him?
Steve
The h1 tag is supposed to inform what the page is about, but if the page is part of a document there also needs to be a heading above this to state what the document is, and possibly also another heading to give the section of the document. Easy to do in print using a wordprocessor to set headers and footers on each page, but you can't do that on a web page with the classical hx tags.
I'm sure that anyone who's contributed to this thread before your post, asked themselves (upon reading your post) whether you were referring to them - I certainly did.
If you were indeed referring to myself, then I hereby give you FULL permission to publically disclose the "facts" and I urge anyone else here to do the same if you have similar concerns.
You make a serious, yet vacuous charge. Without further clarification then I'm sure you'll understand that it's your post that runs the risk of being deemed, misinformation.
HarryM
if the page is part of a document there also needs to be a heading above this to state what the document is
There is indeed a tag already for this purpose - Off the top of me head I couldn't name it but IIRC, it's one of the META tags that indicates that the document belongs within a group of others.
isitreal
the original google whitepaper doesn't agree
I thought we were now dealin with another "Google" today, ie... along the lines of an LSI-type algo - Seems to better fit what I'm witnessing.
BigDave:
In some areas of your argument, our paths meet. Where they don't seems to lie primarily with your concerns about, "being told" how to structure a doc.
All I can say is, it's your choice. You "live or die" by it.
I was taught at school to title each paper I wrote, use paragraphs, head each sub-topic and use capital letters to start each sentence. As far as I'm aware, this is elementary and common knowledge - That's not, I grant you, the same as sayin that people transfer that practice to the web, but if you were buildin a parser, you have to make certain assumptions... like I said earlier; a basic axiom around which to build error-handling.
There are many perfectly valid document layouts. You could have an intro paragraph, then use the H1 to make the statement that is the point of your document, and close with a final paragraph.
Technically, the intro paragraph could be interpreted as belongin to a previous, related page/doc, or actually belongin to nothin at all - Pedantic? Yep, but computer logic is.
I know what you're sayin don't get me wrong, but we're entering an age now where we simply don't know who, what and how our docs are being viewed.
It is not the problem of the creator of the page if your precious program is not able to figure out the meaning of the page. Browsers don't care about the meaning, so they will just render it the way it is coded.
Oh contrare. I gave an example in my above post where software parsed my pages and generated a sitemap based on doc structure - It would've been my loss if my pages weren't documented properly.
That is just one example. I've had the (dis)pleasure of buildin parsers and I can honestly say that those sites that had poorly - very poorly - coded pages, couldn't avail themselves of the services offered until they cleaned 'em up. That is their loss - All because their designers didn't take care of the basics.
And where you talk about browsers, I say, Opera, Firebird, IE etal... they all render differently
And since those pages are not going to be updated, it is the software that cannot handle those pages that will be considered broken.
Such software will tell the user that the page is broken, like the validators do, thus educating... and this is what you have to remember; there's a new generation comin up behind that will enter the market equipped with the pioneering standards of today, the ones we're strugglin to "re-learn". CSS for instance, will be basic entry stuff.
We're slightly driftin off-topic here; at the end of the day, do you want your pages to be found, and then, more importantly, read and digested, by as large an audience as possible?
>>If you were indeed referring to myself,
I wasn’t really referring to anyone posting and I thought that was very clear, perhaps not.
>>You make a serious, yet vacuous charge.
I still find it to be common sense and not vacuous. There are very good reasons why all forums have statements such as …
‘You agree not to hold WebmasterWorld or its members liable for anything stated within the forums.’
and
‘You are responsible for your own posts and agree not to hold PHD Software Systems (webmasterworld.com) liable for any messages posted. ’
and
‘Messages posted at this site are the sole opinion and responsibility of the poster.’
and one I did not find here…
[webmasterworld.com...]
but is on mine and others is…
‘Use the information found here at your own risk. The statements found here are ‘AS IS’ without warranty of any kind.’
But I guess everyone will interpret my post as they see fit?
>>Without further clarification then I'm sure you'll understand that it's your post that runs the risk of being deemed, misinformation.
Huh? Even without ‘further clarification’, it cannot be ‘misinformation’. It’s just a fact of life. Misinformation has long been a tool of war and politics. No matter if it is a war between countries or browser wars, or what ever type of war, conflict, battle, or competition you are talking about. All those definitions are in the thesaurus for war. I've seen misinformation used by very large companies as well. So I'm missing your point as to how it could be at risk of anything other than just a fact to remember.
at the end of the day, do you want your pages to be found, and then, more importantly, read and digested, by as large an audience as possible?
Yes, of course, that's the key point. That's why I'm looking at the top 10 results for the keyword phrases I'm interested in, and finding that use of 'proper' html structure appears to have virtually no influence on that positioning.
What is interesting me in SEO stuff is that it's so completely empirical, study the results, see if you can reverse engineer how those results got there, test, if your test has only one change, and has x result, on several sites, it's fairly easy to determine that was the cause of the change. I suspect when people do things like add h tags or whatever to their document, they also go in and add a lot of other things, and if the page is not dynamic, it's also a fresh page, which is more valuable.
The content valuing logic google is currently using appears to be identical to the logic outlined in their whitepaper, eg, b, strong, large, h1-6 carry one value, links another, content another, file names another, very simple structuring of the data, which is exactly what I would expect when you are dealing this this phenomenally huge amount of data as google is.
If you've read the new google algo tweak, or if it's avaliable online anywhere, I'd like to take a look at it, but I somehow suspect that's not going to be very easy to find.
I'm sure that anyone who's contributed to this thread before your post, asked themselves (upon reading your post) whether you were referring to them - I certainly did.If you were indeed referring to myself, then I hereby give you FULL permission to publically disclose the "facts" and I urge anyone else here to do the same if you have similar concerns.
I certainly thought that he might have been suggesting that it was me. There has been more than one time that it has been suggested that I was some sort of alternate ID for someone else. If it is me that he is referring to, he is certainly welcome to show his proof.
In general, I believe that most people here honestly post their own opinions. Believe it or not, it is quite honely possible to like Google, just as well as it is possible to hate Google. I personally can't understand why anyone would like Microsoft, or willingly send them any money, that does not mean that I will accuse my pro-microsoft friends of somehow being secret Microsoft agents.
I often disagree with others on this board, but the only time I saw a large bunch, with an obvious agenda, shilling was when SK sued Google.
And if you think that anyone considers H1 tags to be some incredible SEO secret that needs protecting, ... well, um, I just can't think of anything to say to that. It is so fundamental that it isn't even funny.
TheWhippinPost,
you are right, we do largely agree. What I was originally objecting to, and still object to, is when the W3C or any other standards body starts getting into the trying to define *as a standard* where to use certain attributes, when those attributes have been in use/abuse for over a decade.
Google, and your tools certainly have the right to accept, reject or promote anything they want based on the page meeting certain structural requirements. Just don't be fooled into thinking that just because something is written on a paper that comes out of a stands body that it is in fact a standard.
Even Opera and Mozilla, as the most "standards compliant" browsers out there, will attempt to render broken pages, and they will properly render depreciated elements even when you have the files set to the latest, greatest version of *ml.
The tools need to serve the users, not the standards. The user cannot fix the page, the user only wants to read the page. A good tool tries its best to do what the user wants. If it is a validator, of course it will point out errors. If it is a search engine, it may use structure as an indicator, but it is most concerned with content.
By the way, if you follow all the rules they taught you in English, it is unlikely that you would make it as an author. In the real world, it all comes down to "was the communication a success or failure". If you followed the rules, and you did not get your point across, you failed. If you broke all the rules, but you did get the point across, you succeeded.
The rules are simply tools to *help* make things clear, it does not make them clear. You can communicate without adjectives or adverbs, but they sure can help clarify things. Following best practice in HTML can help clarify things but it is far less important than the content.
Proper HTML usage will help clarify what your page is about toe the Search Engines, but it would be simply bad design on their part if they allowed themselves to get caught in the twin traps of allowing intentional abuse, or ignorant misuse to have a significant impact on the results.
In other words, give limited benefit, but do not penalize overuse, simply because it is overuse.
and I thought he was referring to me.lol :)
OK jim_w, I don't wish to "pollute" this thread any longer than is necessary, so I'll just sign off with this:
I take on board what you said. I still find it curious as to why your missile was fired from nowhere, specifically in this thread? Something you read surely must've motivated you to do this - I take it, it wasn't a "fire-drill", else it would've appeared in every forum.
I personally can't see anything "suspicious" with any of the posts here - and you did specifically say, '...Take stuff like this that you read up here with a grain of salt.' - so maybe I'm missing sommat?
it cannot be ‘misinformation’.
Well, without facts, it's either non-information, or misinformation. You planted a seed which casts doubt upon an argument posited by a member - Without specifics, you effectively write-off the whole thread as worthless. I don't accept that - This thread has developed into somethin interesting so therefore, I have no alternative but to question the motives behind your post... why not just chip in with an oppinion on the matter at hand?
Nevertheless, this has turned into an interestin topic and I thank everyone for their contribution.
isitreal:
Have you followed the threads on Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)? If not, do a search here - There's a link to a paper on it in one of the first threads. NOTE: It's not suggested that G is using LSI per se, but it seems that there is an LSI-type algo at work and what's more, I believe that this whole doc structure debate plays nicely into its processing.
We know that G can determine what words it "expects" to see associated with certain topics. If I label my doc (via folder/file name, title, h1 etc...) appropriately, then it's far easier to determine if the text beneath the "labels", are relevant. The more unique and specific your doc is, the more relevant to a specific query it becomes.
Headers, along with other verifying factors, help point to specific information. You talk about context; Headers are great for setting context. Any text beneath a header should relate to it... think about that, together with the paragraph above :¬)
"if the page is part of a document there also needs to be a heading above this to state what the document is"There is indeed a tag already for this purpose - Off the top of me head I couldn't name it but IIRC, it's one of the META tags that indicates that the document belongs within a group of others.
I was talking about something visible to the user, not something esoteric that only techies know about.
This is not just a rhetorical point. I recently did a search and landed on a page which was exactly what I was looking for. The page was clearly identified (probably with a h1 tag although I didn't check). The problem was it was one of a large series of pages of indeterminate number which as I clicked 'previous' looking for the beginning of the document just went on and on. Finally I clicked 'home' thinking I could pick up the start of the document there. But there were many documents and I didn't know the name of the one I had been looking at. Found it in the end, but my life could have been made easier.
The designer was at fault for not considering a typical search engine scenario. People do not necessarily arrive at a document at the beginning. But if the designer had wanted to make navigation easier, there is no standard way to do it with hx tags.
The hx tags (IMHO) are likely to become obsolete because they do not reflect the real world. I suspect a large proportion of people who use CSS only use hx tags because they think they are "supposed to" or think hx tags might be important for page ranking.
Users knows nothing about hx tags. What is important to them is the position, size, and impact of the heading, all of which can be implemented without hx tags.
Know what you're sayin, but are we not talking more about navigation and aptly-named categories therein?
FWIW, I believe Opera interprets the "grouping" tag I mentioned and displays it to the user too... a taste of things to come?
If we wanted to take this topic further then we should be talkin about information architecture which encompasses all these things and which, I believe, will become an industry unto itself as we try to struggle with information overload.
But good reads, odd how much guessing goes on about things like IP addresses when it says exactly how it's determined, good news for me since my sites mostly have different first 3 octets.
Nothing in those articles struck me as particularly mind blowing though.
A few good links, reasonably coherent content, doesn't seem that different to me, maybe for the serious spammers it might have caused some problems...
>>OK jim_w, I don't wish to "pollute" this thread any longer than is necessary, so I'll just sign off with this: …
Agreed. Actually I didn’t expect anyone to reply to it. It was just a comment about public discussions about SEO’ing for someone whom may not have the time to stop and think about it.
>>Something you read surely must've motivated you to do this
Yes, it was not just something, but several things from several different people within several different topics. And these people do SEO’ing for a living, so I have to figure that if they do it for food, they must know what they are doing.
>>I take it, it wasn't a "fire-drill", else it would've appeared in every forum.
I would not "pollute" Brett’s board like that. I would not want him to do it to me, ergo, I will not do it to him.
BigDave
>>been suggested that I was some sort of alternate ID for someone else
Maybe you have a split personality that you don’t know about ;-))
When I send MS money, it is so I can get ahead, not so that I can undermine Linux. I still find it hard to believe that anyone with any amount of common sense would give away secrets they know to people that WILL compete with them. (you never give away the goose that laid the golden egg). And since we do not know who up here may be in the indusrty, you do not know if you are giving away secrets to the competitor or not. (loose lips sinks ships) MS would not, IBM does not and as a matter of fact they go to great legal lengths to protect their secrets.
The reason for the post here and at this time is simple. It was the first post that came along where it was appropriate, i.e. a discussion about ‘SEO’ing and as BigDave said, hx tags are not exactly going to make or break any rankings. I would not want to say something that could change someone’s mind about a topic that could actually hurt or help his or her rankings.
For the record, I use hx tags all the time, not to excel in the rankings, people come to and bookmark our site because of the content, not because I manipulated a search engine to get on top and they are too ignorant to go beyound page 1 of the SERPs. Hx tags seem to be a good way to ensure that my page looks the same on all browsers, which is what I am most concerned about. hx tags have been around since day one of html as I recall, so most browsers, even the real stubborn ones, work all the same.
