I just found this article from that wonderful site, search engine watch, about the death of Meta tags, or at least, the death of the 'key word' Mata tag. (I don't know of anyone who actually used it). The things about Meta tags, is that they give a site rigorous time, author, and context specificity, so they are much more valued by the academic community (where context adds value) than a general web audience. I would really like to find articles from the academic community about the use (or demise) of Meta tags (especially with second generation searching). Now, how do I find them?
By Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief
Traffick.com's Andrew Goodman wrote recently in an essay about meta tags, "If somebody would just declare the end of the metatag era, full stop, it would make it easier on everyone."I'm happy to oblige, at least in the case of the meta keywords tag. Now supported by only one major crawler-based search engine — Inktomi — the value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead. And like Andrew, good riddance, I say! (October 2002)
