Hi Elle, > title attributes do help SEO and google does find them,
Elle - my specific example showed that your statement above just isn't true, as I'll explain again below. > if the word > appears only once in the page (and especially not in the main text), it is > quite logical that that page will not come up first on search results. Yes, that is a factually correct statement, but isn't relevent to the specific example I gave using Google specific search operators. I did not do a 'ranking' query. I did a site query looking for two specific words. i.e. as Google says: site: If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. I.e. by asking site:cogentis.com.au Australian DDA I am asking to see all pages from the domain cogentis.com.au which include the words Australian DDA. One page on the domain includes those keywords on the page in <p> - the other page (the home page) only includes them in the title attribute. Google can't find the words in the title attribute. Why not? Because it doesn't index words in the title attribute. Feel free to show me an example using the same methodology, where Google does index words which only appear in a title attribute. > Also google does index the keywords and description metatags -- but because > they have been abused by black hat SEO, google does not give them as much > importance in its algorithm anymore. Ok - no issue with Meta description tag - but again, not true for the meta Keywords tag in Google. Again, lets try testing....... Do a Google search for the made up word pnogiwaz It appears only in the meta keywords tag on http://www.cogentis.com.au/ But Cogentis doesn't appear in the results? http://www.google.com.au/search?q=pnogiwaz&hl=en&filter=0 Only pages that have copied/ scraped my content, and included the contents of my meta keywords in a <p> on their version of my page - appear in the results. Alternatively, search using the site operator http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=pnogiwaz+site%3Acogentis.com.au&btnG=Search&meta= No result. Again - feel free to give me an example using the same methodology where a word which only appears in the meta keywords field, and no where else on the page, is indexed in Google. In order to show the difference - Yahoo does index meta keywords. e.g http://au.search.yahoo.com/search?p=pnogiwaz&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8 Best Chris The example I gave On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:35 AM, Elle Meredith <li...@designbyelle.com.au> wrote: > > On Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:51:52, Chris Dimmock wrote: > >> Actually, using the 'title' attribute in a link does NOT add a little >> bit of SEO. Title element ('Page Title') - yes for SEO - but title >> attribute - no. >> >> Try it yourself. Put a few words in a title attribute - words which >> don't otherwise appear on your page. The once Google has re-indexed >> the page, (look at the date in the Google cache); then search your >> sitein Google for the words you included in the title attribute. >> >> <snip> >> >> Google won't find them, because it doesn't index them; just like >> Google doesn't index the content of e.g. meta name ="keywords" field. >> > > title attributes do help SEO and google does find them, but... if the word > appears only once in the page (and especially not in the main text), it is > quite logical that that page will not come up first on search results. > > As far as I know, google looks at the whole page and tries to understand the > theme of the page. This is done by looking at the content and finding what > the theme is according to everything on the page and how each element is > related to that theme. Google gives more importance to keywords that appear > in the page title and top headings but it also looks at the rest of the page > including images alt text, title attributes, link naming, links, etc... > > Also google does index the keywords and description metatags -- but because > they have been abused by black hat SEO, google does not give them as much > importance in its algorithm anymore. > > > FWIW, > Elle > > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
