All Search Engines Love Spiders - How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too
Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.
Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them.
meta name=”robots” content=”index”
This meta command is one of the most common ones used -
...show results, company should use paid listings to target keywords that are being optimized at the moment. This will enable you to have exposure on search engines for your major keywords, while your optimized keywords take time to show up ...
meta name=”robots” content=”follow”
The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on
...an active internet connection and again, a website with a specific theme. You might be able to immediately start to generate targeted traffic once you have a website up and running... If you know what you're doing. If you know ...
meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”
The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.
When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.
There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command.
...profiles, new product exhibitions and sports fans interactive forums. From Netease's perspective, such all-round cooperation will not only enrich their sports section contents, but also create a more humanised and interactive online atmosphere, attracting more audience and enhancing sports brand ...
As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:
“Consider creating static copies of [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34431 ]dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages.”
In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the “no index” command on the dynamic version of the page,
...is a website which includes tutorials, 8 week action plan, website hosting, website designer, keyword research tools and much more. But one special advantage of Wealthy Affiliate is the community Forum. The Forum includes Internet Marketers of different strengths and ...
meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”
This tag tells search engine spiders that it’s OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn’t follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your own personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow
...mailing list. Alternatively, you can provide the post title and link from your blog - this way people will be encouraged to visit your blog. With this latter approach, you can add a brief review of an affiliate product or ...
meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”
Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags - and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, “Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index.”
This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages
...traffic (known as suspects at this stage) as possible to the squeeze/landing page and get as many suspects as possible to submit their names and email addresses (which would turn them into prospects) and send them to the affiliate product ...
meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”
Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, offer a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances
...for good affiliate companies, they will provide with all the essentials tools and resources to help you promote their products. For instance, marketingtips has a comprehensive layout plan for her affiliate in the promotion of their products. They give tips ...
For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business’s site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling
...with an Internet business? There is a lot to be said for companies that provide consumable products that are reordered on a regular basis. A good indication of whether or not you have a winner is asking yourself if it ...
Conclusion
The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don’t. The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, I will write about them in future articles.
(C) Medium Blue 2007
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a [http://www.mediumblue.com/ ]search engine optimization company. His
...by autoresponder to drip information about yourself and your company to educate your prospect. A series of short messages about having a home business in general as opposed to directly promoting your opportunity is the best way to do this ...