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I've read an article about the Aesop Meta Tag that provides website owners with a standardized method of classifying their web
pages into one of six categories. The Search Engine matches the search terms with appropriate web pages according to the classification.
E.g. I am from a hosting company, so Aesop Meta Tag for us will be the following:
<meta name=aesop content=sales>
My Q is: is this new tag really new, cool, driving targeted traffic?
And also, does Google care about Aesop at all?
Thanks a lot, and maybe if there already was a discussion of Aesop, somebody can point me at the thread where i can find the answers.
welcome to WebmasterWorld.
the Aesop Tags only work with that search engine and as far as I know are not supported by any other Search Engine at present. Therefor there usefulness and impact would be very very small. We had a discussion about this some time ago. If you use the search function at the top of the page and search for "Aesop Tags" you should be able to find it.
Onya
Woz
I have never, ever heard of even one person getting even one hit from that search engine. Neither have I ever heard of them spidering sites, which is what spidering search engines do.
Tay, Google does not use meta tags, and even the search engines that do won't use any but those that conform to standards. Not that I've ever heard of.
Stay with the major search engines and directories. Browse through our Submission forum and you'll see who to submit to; don't worry about others and you'll do just fine.
Marcia, I'm confused with what you said *I have never, ever heard of even one person getting even one hit from that search engine*
Are you talking about Google?
From what I know, Google now dominates Internet search, so I have to take it into account.
I also know, Google uses at least meta title and meta description tag, so your words that *Google does not use meta tags* were a huge surprise for me!
/Ove
As indicated by the "content", if your site fits the content description word, that is the one-line tag that should be put into the header. It is only good for aesop. If Aesop ever becomes a search engine that produces traffic, it might be of some use in the beginning, but the potential is not great. It is not "innovative search technology" (as they state on their website). It is very elementary.
Another point is that adding the URL requires "registration". Registering produces an email and information produced by a marketing firm that pushes automated marketing and their system. It appears that the "search engine" is a convenient ploy to build a database of webmasters and internet businesses to market to.
The Aesop tag adds a small icon next to the page's description in results. Clicking on the icon produces (via popup) a key to the icons. Note the key isn't even on aesop.com:
discoveryhost.com/iconpopup.htm
Exploring discoveryhost.com, by the way, redirects you to roibot.com, which seems to be a traffic-building company of some sort. (This jives with what volatilegx said about Startblaze being involved.)
On the other hand, the sites with the icons are always clustered at the head of the SERPs. I think they're giving preferred placement to pages with the Aesop tag.
Spot-checking some Aesop SERPs (mostly for general terms like "sex", "jobs", or "gambling"), however, shows the icons appearing for sites that don't seem to use the Aesop tag. Either Aesop is adding those icons based on a second criterion (paid placement? auto-categorization?), or a lot of people are wasting time cloaking the lamest meta tag in years.
(edited by: Marcia at 3:04 am (utc) on April 3, 2002)
Another use for their "proprietary" tag is to be able to monitor how well they have (or have not) saturated the market. Easy enough for them to use the tag for their own research and marketing purposes. The tag would certainly identify potential marketing software and promotion clients.
Unfortunately the search engine itself never really took hold. I did at one point promote the ROIBOT program to a few clients of mine and they signed up. There are a few useful tools there in the suite and one of them which I found interesting was the Web Page Spy. Its a little program that you configure to watch for changes on web sites that you have bookmarked or those of the competition.
The META tags? Specific to the aesop search engine. Of any value? In my personal opinion, zero. I tested them for about 90 days back in the initial startup stages and the only visitors I received were from myself and a few clients following some of my insider reviews.
No need to waste valuable real estate in your <head> [webmasterworld.com] section if you don't have to.
But they're out of the picture for those who adhere to more traditional, proven marketing methods. Their methods are also eschewed by many who feel they're not on the cutting edge of what's considered respectable corporate or business marketing techniques.
>No need to waste valuable real estate
LOL... or bandwidth either, pageoneresults. ;)
