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Q: Purpose of lines in HTML Code ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Purpose of lines in HTML Code
Category: Computers > Internet
Asked by: scottpes-ga
List Price: $10.00
Posted: 06 Jan 2003 09:09 PST
Expires: 05 Feb 2003 09:09 PST
Question ID: 138269
My site, http://www.pesquality.com was recently indexed by Google. 
The time elapsed between when I submitted the site and when it was
crawled by Google was about 2 months.  And although from what I've
read, this is pretty normal.  Recently, while studying a competitor's
HTML code I came across these two lines:
<meta name="ROBOTS" CONTENT ="follow,index">
<meta name="revisit-after" CONTENT= "10 days">
My question is:
Does this bit of code tell crawlers such as the Googlebot to actually
revisit the site in 10 days?  If so, will the robots obey this?  If
not what are these lines for?
Answer  
Subject: Re: Purpose of lines in HTML Code
Answered By: tutuzdad-ga on 06 Jan 2003 11:18 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Dear scottpes-ga;

Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting
question.

“The content of the robots meta tag contains directives separated by
commas. The currently defined directives are [NO]INDEX and [NO]FOLLOW.
The INDEX directive specifies if an indexing robot should index the
page. The FOLLOW directive specifies if a robot is to follow links on
the page. The defaults are INDEX and FOLLOW. The values ALL and NONE
set all directives on or off: ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW and
NONE=NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW.”
“HTML Author's Guide to the Robots META tag”
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html

As in this example:  <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

“The revisit-after tag contains a time unit to indicate when the robot
should recheck the page for changes.”
QUICK NOTES – META TAGS
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3ll/htmlqwkm.htm#re

As in this example: <meta name="revisit-after" content="30 days">


As a revisit tag, this meta code sometimes defines how often a search
engine or spider should revisit your website for re-indexing purposes.
Those who alter the content of their web sites on a regular basis
sometimes employ this tag as a means of being re-indexed or boosting
their rankings with some search engines, provided that the search
engine displays it’s results based on the most recent submissions.

Some still believe that the re-visit tag can be beneficial with some
search engines but in truth, most spiders nowadays ignore the revisit
tag altogether, though a few, such as Inktomi still recognize them. It
should be noted however that most search engine spiders will generally
revisit your page regardless of this tag "provided” that your site is
already in their database. So, for example, if your web site is
already listed with the Google search engine, your site will be
re-crawled or "revisited" by Google on an average of every 2-4 weeks.
So, as you can see, setting the revisit tag for 30 days or more would
be fruitless as many robots and spiders are likely return before that
time anyway, and setting it at 10 days would be pointless since most
robots and spiders are now set to ignore revisit meta tags altogether.

Here is a bit of valuable information that sums up the re-visit meta
tag question fairly well:

“The purpose of this meta tag is to get the search engine's robot to
revisit the site after a specified time period so it can account for
any updates, although it rarely works now as most decent search
engines automatically update with information from a web page after a
few weeks anyway. Some search engines however may not accept your site
if you have this meta tag in your source code.”
META TAGS AND WEB PAGE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES
http://datacreek.net/support/meta.html

My advice is save yourself the extra strokes and focus on some other
means of getting better web page rankings as this method alone is not
the best technique -  with Google or with most other search engines.

I hope you find that that my research exceeds your expectations. If
you have any questions about my research please post a clarification
request prior to rating the answer. I welcome your rating and your
final comments and I look forward to working with you again in the
near future. Thank you for using Google Answers.

Best regards;
Tutuzdad-ga



INFORMATION SOURCES


“HTML Quick Reference”
http://www.thebird.org/web/htmlbas.html


SUBMIT CORNER
http://www.submitcorner.com/Guide/Meta/revisit.shtml


“Robots.txt and the Robots Meta tag”
http://www.search-engine-optimization-help.net/robots.htm


META TAGS AND WEB PAGE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES
http://datacreek.net/support/meta.html


META TAG CODE CHART
http://www.granitewebdesign.com/services/mark_promo/meta_tag_code_chart.shtml


QUICK NOTES – META TAGS
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3ll/htmlqwkm.htm#re




SEARCH STRATEGY


SEARCH ENGINE USED:

Google ://www.google.com


SEARCH TERMS USED:

"<meta name="ROBOTS" CONTENT ="follow,index">”

“<meta name="revisit-after" CONTENT= "10 days">”

"<meta name="ROBOTS" CONTENT ="follow,index">” Google

“<meta name="revisit-after" CONTENT= "10 days">” Google

“Meta tags”
scottpes-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars and gave an additional tip of: $2.00
Thank you for your quick answer.  It does answer my question
completely with no clarification necessary.

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