Google and meta tags

[James]

There seems to be a popular myth that Google ignores meta tags.

Not true. If you search for my site on Google you will see that the description against my entry on Google comes from the "description" meta tag.



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Actually, just take my word for it, you probably won't find my site (unless you use search for the URL itself) :(

[David]

Don't despair James, time will improve things. As for meta tags - I've heard similar things but I doubt that they are ignored completely but they definately have less weight than the page title and <H1> tag.

[francis]

There might be a misconception that Google ignores all meta tags, but it's certainly not true that it ignores the description tag. If present, Google will use that as you've demonstrated above. If it isn't present, you'll probably see some code in its place. Have a look at search engine watch's page on meta tags (http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167931) for more info. The one tag that you can be abosolutely certain that it does ignore is the keywords one because of the rampant abuse that it caused.