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Meta Tags That Work Part II, 2/99
Research BackgroundBack again with another wave of meta tag checks at the top search engines. If you have not read our first report, please do so at Sample Meta Tags that Work, Nov., 1998. This will give you some helpful background to understand this report.This survey began with a search of 16 search engines: Lycos, Hot Bot, Yahoo, AOL/Net Find, GoTo, Excite, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Look Smart, Netscape, Northern Light, MSN, Galaxy, Mining Co, Magellan, and Web Crawler. First, a search of the term "meta tags" was run at all 16 sites. The results were recorded. These results were then analyzed for re-occurring web sites. A list is prepared, summarizing which sites have the most listings in the top 10s for these engines; and which sites were the number 1 sites for these search engines. This list was used to prepare this web site. This time around, I also ran a parallel search for the term "meta tags" to see if there is a difference between a singular word and a plural form of the same word. You can view the results later in this report. Watch Meta Tag Channel for reports on choosing the right title and legal issues related to meta tags coming in this March. Specific Findings Related to These Search EnginesBefore the results are posted, take a look at some findings related to the search engines:
#'s of Results Posted Per Search EngineHere is a chart of the amount of sites posted by each engine for the term "meta tags". Now remember, more does not mean better. It is more important to have 10 sites hit the mark than 400,000 where you have to sift through 90% of unrelated materials to find the 10% that are applicable. For example, one of the sites polled did not have one entry that had anything to do with meta tags in its top 10. Another had a repeat entry show up four times in the top 5. Two others had at least three repeats. Out of respect for the sites that didn't do so well, any identifying references will be left out. I assume that these engines are probably already aware of this and are striving to make their services better as we speak. Web Crawler had the lowest return, but every site was relevant. On the other hand, the AOL/Excite/Netscape combination which each boasted the highest returns of 167,154 also had ten relevant responses. GoTo is a fee based placement search engine so you can guess that their top 10s are going to be relevant and they are going to be service oriented. (and they were to both.)
Who's on First?Here is a chart of the sites that placed number one for each search engine. Metatags.com was the only site that placed #1 in more than one search engine. (Except for the sites that placed number one in the parallel sites like AOL/Excite/Netscape and Looksmart/Mining Co and Alta Vista).
Once again, we see a lot of variety in the top showings. We have one dictionary reference, 4 tutorials, 4 services/tools, and one e-mag article site. We see metatags.com dominating with the AOL/Excite/Netscape trio plus Magellan. We see Search Engine Watch is back again with top honors at Web Crawler. We lost Philb.com and Siteup since the last survey. But these will still appear in the overall top 10 listings below and they do also make appearances under other search term versions of the term meta tags. We see some interesting tutorials and services from places such as Meta Medic and TagGen.Net that have more coverage this month than in the last survey.
Top Sites Showing Multiple Listings in Search EnginesIn the first meta tag sample report, we ran a survey of the top 10 sites in top search engines to see which sites showed up the most under the search term "meta tags". . Philb.com, Search Engine Watch, Meta Tags.Com, SiteUp and Meta Tag Builder.com were the big winners. There was some consistency in the number of similar sites displayed. However no site placed in the top 10 of more than 50% of the search engines polled. How did they do this month? And what sites made the grade during the month of February? Let's find out. First, only one site made a big splash when we ran the same survey in February. That was the metatags.com site with 8 listings. They had some help with listings in the AOL/Excite/Netscape trio and in the Miningco/LookSmart and Alta Vista combos. This was much better than the 3 site showing they had in last month's survey of 12 sites. They maxed out with exactly 50% of the search engines listing their web sites. This should give you an idea of how difficult it is to place in the top 10's. This is the web site named "meta tags" and it is only hitting the top ten on 50% of 16 respectable search engines. You have to consider the odds. As we noted above, in the site that posted the lowest results, you still have only a 1/900 chance of making the top 10. In the sites that posted the greatest results, those odds are diminished to 1/167,000. Do you always win the prize in McDonald's scratch cards? Get the picture. These are basically the same sort of odds. Now if you have a site with a unique keyword or title like "meta tags for construction industry" and someone runs that search, your results will obviously improve dramatically. But overall, don't rely too heavily on the notion that you will place in the top 10's for your web site. Some of the sites that should know best, sites discussing meta tags, can't even do it. It's not an easy task when you consider the numbers. Even a site with the search term being the domain name was not enough to cover more than 50% of the top 10s. The next closest sites appeared in 25% of the top 10's with 4 listings. Then we had a number of 3 listing sites (most of these were Excite/AOL/Netscape combos) hitting top 10's approximately 20% of the time; and 2 listing sites covering 16% of the top 10s. The rest were single listings.
**=LookSmart, MiningCo, Alta Vista Listings The rest of the listings were single entry sites. Philb.com, siteup.com, metatagmachine.com, and metatagbuilder.com all showed up only once this time.
Singular vs.Plural Searches for the Term Meta TagsIn some search engines, it made a difference whether I used "meta tags" or "meta tag". The term "meta tag" produced different results. Those sites were Look Smart and MiningCo by connection, Yahoo!, MSN, Magellan, Lycos, Web Crawler, Excite, AOL Netfind, Netscape and Hot Bot. GoTo, Northern Lights, and Infoseek returned the same results. You will need to keep this in mind for the places that are plural/singular sensitive so you add tags when registering at their web sites. For more information on this, watch for the March Article on Titles. What contribution an effective title can make to overall placement success. . Scrub the Web's meta tag site did much better with the search "meta tag" than "meta tags". Why did it score higher under "meta tag" than "meta tags"? The term "meta tag" shows up all over on its tags and title. Their title has "meta tag" in it. Their description has the term "meta tag" in it twice. and their keywords started with "meta tag". This means you should consider listing both singular and plural forms in your title and description tags if your site's key focus encompasses both. Site up's meta tag generator also made more appearances under the term "meta tag". Metatags.com continued to show up under "meta tag". Tag.net, tag master, infospider, metatagbuilder, and webpromotes also made more appearances under "meta tag" than "meta tags".
What About Spacing Between the Search Terms?Spacing also makes a difference. At every search engine tested, when I used "metatags" instead of "meta tags", it returned different results. Most of the results of the first version had the version "metatags" in either its title, description, or keywords. Whereas the "meta tags" search focused on sites with the version "meta tags" in its title, description, or keywords. So yes, spacing did make an important difference in this survey. And yes, you should add a spaceless version of your top site keywords (if it is more than one word) to your title, description or keywords. Metatags.com covered all its bases with a "Meta Tags" and "metatags" in its title; "meta tag" in its description; and "meta tag" and "meta tags" in its keywords. It was rewarded with top listings in all categories.
A Look at the Meta Tags Behind the Winning SitesThere is no secret to metatags.com's listing in the top 10's, but let's check out the tags of a couple other hot web sites to see if we can pinpoint the secret to their success. Once again, we are on the prowl for tips and secrets to help you place better with search engines. Here is what we found out. In our first survey, we reviewed a top e-mag site, top tools site with "meta tag" in the domain name, and a top tutorial site. We learned that brevity seemed to be a common characteristic. All the top sites hit hard on the meta tag term in their title, keywords, and description. But they did not overload their tags with a number of extraneous words. Why didn't some of the sites make it? We saw sites that either lacked tags or overloaded their tags with a number of unrelated keywords.
1. A Note About the Other Factors Affecting Top PlacementThis time, we decided to view a couple of sites that did not have meta tags in the domain name, yet made the top grades. We also narrowed our scope to sites that made the top grade without the help of a combination site listing. Now we should note that there are also a number of other factors at work here. In reality, their tags may have had nothing to do with either a site's success or its failure to hit the top 10's. Simply the time of registration may be the key factor. Site popularity can be important. The number of keywords in your body text can be relevant. ( The Web Hut has a service that will count your URL's keywords from a search engine's perspective if you are interested in seeing how your site rates under the overall page keyword review system.) The title and/or domain name itself are very important. Perhaps a site with multiple showings has recently registered and that alone is getting it top billing status.
2. A Note About the Variances in the Way Some Search Engines Will Catalog Web SitesDifferent sites also will catalog a web site differently. There are the traditional sites that catalog based on article keyword indexing, popularity, and relevancy. There are also sites that catalog based on specific criteria such as payment or votes. For example, some sites like GOTO give top listing to those who pay for it. Top listing is considered a "pole advertising position" (for those of you into auto racing). Search King gives top listing to the sites which receive the most relevancy votes from the reading public. (This makes a lot of sense from a customer's standpoint) A new site will get top placement. If they continue to get a lot of "yes" relevancy votes, they may stay there. Otherwise, they will drop down to make room for other sites with more vote returns. As they pointed out in Search King's "add your URL" section, your site's title and description become even more important to attract a reader's attention. They also allow you to personally edit either your title or description if you are not getting the returns you would like to see. Village Links , on the other hand, does everything randomly. Everytime a keyword is searched, your site has the same chance of top appearance as any other site. This way, they explain in their add your URL section, every site has an equal opportunity to hit the top. If you want more information on this, see Search Engines Submit page, which lists a graph of the top search engine requirements for placement at their site.
3. A Look at Some of the Tags That WorkedWith all of that in mind, let's look at some of the tags for the sites that did hit the top more than once. Fg-a.com's meta tags page hit the top ten in four separate places (Alta Vista, GoTo, MSN, and Hot Bot.) This may have something to do with a recent registration because they showed up three different times on one web site (which is sometimes common with recent registration). But it may also relate to their meta tags. Their title is "Meta Tags". Their description starts with, "We show you exactly how to add Meta Tags to your web site, free!...". They open their keywords section with, "Meta, Tags, meta tag,...". It is probably the combination of the term Meta Tags appearing immediately in the title, description, and keyword tags that helped earn them top recognition with four of the sixteen sites, or 25% of the sites surveyed. Real-marketing.com boasted 3 top independent billings with GoTo, Microsoft Network, and Hot Bot. Their title may have been the winner here, "Meta Magic, A Tool for HTML Meta Tags", as their site displayed no keyword or description meta tags. Here is an interesting one, Home.onestop.net has three top listings in Magellan, Web Crawler, and Northern Lights. What did they do to compensate for a lack of promotion or meta tag domain name? That is a good question. Perhaps it had to do with their independent registrations with the search engines. Their title is "Met Tag Installation Software". The term "meta tags" does appear towards the end of their description. Their keywords have "meta tags" buried behind nineteen other words. And the word "meta tags" does not appear in its URL. Perhaps it was the the combination of the term in the keywords and in the description? This one is somewhat of a mystery. Finally, a foreign site earns top honors. "Suchmaschineneintrag tips, tricks, meta tag info" made top grades at Hot Bot, GoTo, and Microsoft despite the potential language barrier. What put them over the top? The description has the word "Meta-Tags" in it. The keywords section has, "...meta-tags, meta, tags, meta tags,..." in it. The title has "Meta-Tags" in it. This trio seemed to be the magic combination for search engine success. It appears that "meta tag" based domain name sites may not be showing up more here because their domain name is singular and not plural. This search survey is run with the plural form of meta tag. Perhaps if they add the plural form to their title and top positions in their tags, they will have better luck.
Meta Tag II Survey Lessons to be LearnedSo what conclusions can we draw from this run of meta checks? The first study showed us the importance of hitting your topic hard without overwhelming your tags with extraneous keywords.
Top Search Sites in the Top 100
So who is on top? This is what 100Hot has to say about that:
100Hot's Top Search Engine Sites for 1/25/99:
ConclusionSo what have we learned during this jaunt through web search land. First, if you can get your site listed at the Excite/AOL/Netscape search engine, you will be rewarded with three top placements. If you can get your site listed at LookSmart, you'll also appear at MiningCo.'s web search. Alta Vista and LookSmart also had the same listings. GoTo may cost you money, but you will get to pick your own keywords and positioning, which may be worth the expense. It is also a great place to check for service based web site searching. (You know the sites at the top will be relevant. They are paying for it.There are also sites that offer unique services worth checking into like Search King and Village Links. For some sites, you may be wise to incorporate both singular and plural forms of your keywords to cover both a singular word search and a plural form search for your keywords. Spacing and Results from Specific Checks. Contact, Meta Services, Promotion DirectoriesIf you have any questions or would like me to post an article about a search related to your industry, please feel free to drop me a note at azurii@yahoo.com . If you would like professional meta tag or submission related services, see Azurii Designs. If you would like other information or directories specific to web site promotions, see PromoNet If you would like more meta tags links, see If you would like to return to the Meta Tags Channel Main Page click here. If you would like to see the first report, visit Meta Tag Samples I, 11/98 . Good Luck and Happy Tagging! Azurii Designs Please continue to watch this page for updates. If you have questions regarding this page or wish to submit your URL for consideration, please send an email to azurii@yahoo.com . If you are submitting a URL, indicate which page you would prefer it to be listed. Also include a description and keywords if your URL lacks meta tags.
 Created at Creative Connection Copyright : © Azurii Designs , 2/99, All Rights Reserved. |
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