HTML comment duplicates meta description

Site ranks #1 in 10 million +

[grayhair]

A site that ranks #1 in over 10 million has a comment that duplicates word for word their meta description after title, description, keywords.

This is not a spam site.

Do the search engines pick up comments?

[robotsdobetter]

Some people think robots do look at them, but if they do they don't look at it to hard.

If they are keyword stuffing in the comment tag this would be spam.

[pageoneresults]

If they are keyword stuffing in the comment tag this would be spam.

Not really. It is more a case of misuse of the HTML Comments Tag. It can't be spam if the SEs ignore the content of the tag.

HTML Comments are treated as markup and therefore have no value in regards to page relevance.

I'd be willing to bet that most everyone who has viewed that page has run to insert HTML Comments Tags on their sites thinking it will do the same. That is how the myth has perpetuated over the years.

[hannamyluv]

It's not exactly a comment tag, but we just modified a <noscript> tag b/c google was picking it up and using it in the description of our site when you searched for our site by name. I would have thought that they would ignore that one, but obviously, they don't.

Maybe the whole comments thing is a myth, but if the SEO's think it's a myth, wouldn't it be a good feature to look at for an algo? I don't know if they work or not and they probably don't, but one never knows what those whiley SE's will look at trying to circumvent the tricks SEO's have already figured out.

Edit reasons: added more comments

[edited by: hannamyluv at 7:05 pm (utc) on April 13, 2004]

[grayhair]

I would not have thought a comment would be relevant but I can't figure out why they come in at #1 for the keyword. They only have about 1/3 of the backlinks as the #2 spot and both have the same PR (7 of 10).

[pageoneresults]

<noscript>

tag b/c google was picking it up and using it in the description of our site when you searched for our site by name.

Actually the content between the opening

<noscript>

and closing

</noscript>

is indexed. This is the correct behavior for most spiders. That area between the

<noscript>

tags is where you place the non-script alternative. It is just like the

<noframes></noframes>

tag.

[robotsdobetter]

Not really. It is more a case of misuse of the HTML Comments Tag. It can't be spam if the SEs ignore the content of the tag.

How could someone misuse it? If they are repeating the same words over and over that is very much spam by all means because you and I both know what they are trying to do. :)

It can't be spam if the SEs ignore the content of the tag.

I agree with that, but no one can say for sure if they do ignore them, but I do think they ignore it or at the least don't look at it to much.

[Robert Charlton]

...but no one can say for sure if they do ignore them...

Well, you can test it, just as has been done on numerous threads before that have discussed the subject ad nauseum.

As I've posted before...

Your search - sitename-menu-relative-leftnav-txt - did not match any documents.

[webnewton]

There are 100 of things which matter while ranking your site. comment tag hardly matters. This is no spam either.