What is the difference between Meta Tags?

[Fufi]

Difference between:

<META content="News, news, ..." name=KEYWORDS>

and

<META name="KEYWORDS" content="News, news, ...">

You can note that the Content and the name are the same,
but in the first case the name KEWORDS is without Quotes,
and is after the content.

What is the difference? what that means for Search Engines?
And, if means something, what is better?

thanx for any suggestion...

 

[Benjamin Niemann]

Difference between:

<META content="News, news, ..." name=KEYWORDS>

and

<META name="KEYWORDS" content="News, news, ...">

You can note that the Content and the name are the same,
but in the first case the name KEWORDS is without Quotes,
and is after the content.

What is the difference?

There is no difference - neither the order of attributes nor the omitted
quotes for the name attribute matter (in this case).
Usually you have to quote the attribute value - the quotes can only be
omitted in some special cases like here (only letters).

what that means for Search Engines?

Nothing at all - and for some major engines even less than that, because
they ignore the 'keywords' meta element completely.

And, if means something, what is better?

Even if there is no difference, many people (and the HTML spec) consider it
good practice to always use quotes - at least you don't have to remember
which characters are allowed in the attribute value when you omit the
quotes.

 

[Fufi]

what an a perfect response!

very thanx

This is so strange that Major Search Engines ignores Keywords,
and I belive you, by knowing pople confirms your answer about.

I am surprised on that the M.S.E. use this method...
The result is that the Page Makers put Keywords in the title tag
and this is not logic and not a stuff regarding a computer sane mentum
environ.

I don't know if they have future...

thanx again

 

[PretLetters]

Usually you have to quote the attribute value - the quotes can only be
omitted in some special cases like here (only letters).

Having to quote attribute values depends on two things:
- the doctype you choose to use;
- whether or not the value has spaces in it.

For HTML4.01 Transitional you are not required to quote values for
example.

 

[PretLetters]

Fufi wrote:

Please do _not_ top-post. Insert your reply underneath the parts you
respond to and delete the parts you don't do anything with. Also delete
the signature of the messages you reply to (all underneath and
including -- at the end of a message).

This is so strange that Major Search Engines ignores Keywords,

Not so strange if you consider how very easy it is to abuse that
feature. One can put anything as a value for <meta name="keywords"
content="foo bar anything you want but is not representating the page
at all">. As is with description. And people did make abuse of this. So
SE's decided to rely on what is _in_ the page rather than what the
author said was in the page.
With the description though: in some cases SE's will show the
description of a page, so they seem to index it. But they don't
actually use the description to decide on what the page is about.

 

[Els]

Barbara, your sig sep is broken...

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Barbara, your sig sep is broken...

More G2.

 

[PretLetters]

Barbara, your sig sep is broken...

I see. Somehow I can't get new messages through my own newsserver,
alt.html only. Maybe since the hostile take over from our neighbours
from alt.2600, the server decided not to carry it anymore. I don't
know. So for alt.html only I use Google Groups. Or try to. Didn't know
that the -- (dash dash space thingy) doesn't get obeyed by Google.
Damn.

Thanks,
Barbara

 

[Els]

I see. Somehow I can't get new messages through my own newsserver,
alt.html only. Maybe since the hostile take over from our neighbours
from alt.2600,

I've heard about that, never see any of it though ;-)

the server decided not to carry it anymore.

Use a different server?

I don't
know. So for alt.html only I use Google Groups. Or try to. Didn't know
that the -- (dash dash space thingy) doesn't get obeyed by Google.
Damn.

But it does - just did a filter on googlegroups message IDs, and for
instance Travis Newbury's posts do have a proper sig separator.

 

[PretLetters]

But it does - just did a filter on googlegroups message IDs, and for
instance Travis Newbury's posts do have a proper sig separator.

Really? No idea how he does that then.

 

[Els]

Really? No idea how he does that then.

Okay, you can give away the secret now - what special trick did you
use?

 

[PretLetters]

Okay, you can give away the secret now - what special trick did you
use?

I was just joking a bit with that previous post and meanwhile trying to
figure out if it is really possible (and if so, how) to add a proper
sig separator. Using various ways to reply (with or without preview,
from the singled out post et cetera), using an additional empty line
between the separator and the sig itself, testing about a bit.

I didn't work with that previous post I guess, or did it?

 

[Els]

I was just joking a bit with that previous post and meanwhile trying to
figure out if it is really possible (and if so, how) to add a proper
sig separator. Using various ways to reply (with or without preview,
from the singled out post et cetera), using an additional empty line
between the separator and the sig itself, testing about a bit.

I didn't work with that previous post I guess, or did it?

I didn't work on the one I saw without a sig, but it did work where
you had the sig separator followed by a "<g>".

 

[Benjamin Niemann]

Having to quote attribute values depends on two things:
- the doctype you choose to use;

There is no difference between the strict and transitional versions of HTML4
in this regard. There _is_ a difference between HTML and XHTML - in XHTML
the quotes must be present. I did not consider XHTML here, because the code
snip of the OP was obviously HTML.

- whether or not the value has spaces in it.

It's not that easy. The exact list of allowed characters in unquoted
attribute values can be found in the spec, section "3.2.2 Attributes":

<quote>
In certain cases, authors may specify the value of an attribute without any
quotation marks. The attribute value may only contain letters (a-z and
A-Z), digits (0-9), hyphens (ASCII decimal 45), periods (ASCII decimal 46),
underscores (ASCII decimal 95), and colons (ASCII decimal 58). We recommend
using quotation marks even when it is possible to eliminate them.

For HTML4.01 Transitional you are not required to quote values for
example.

Not true, see above.

 

[Mazin07]

Close your tag too, per XHTML specs.

<meta name="keywords" content="nothing" />
^

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

[ getting the sig separator working with Google Groups ]

I didn't work on the one I saw without a sig, but it did work where
you had the sig separator followed by a "<g>".

It must be the extra line between the dash_dash_space and the signature block.
Anyway, meanwhile I did go back to individual.net. Just can't ignore the
good quality server they are. Once you've been there, all other newsservers seem
.... I don't know... Individual spoils its users I guess.

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