I use NetObjects Fusion version 8 - web design software. The way it does metatags is pretty ridiculous, particularly when I upgraded an existing site from version 7. On some of my sites, the problem I am seeing is duplicate metatags for most of my pages. If I view source, on most pages I see two titles, two descriptions, and two sets of keywords. I'm afraid that search engines will react wrong. My experience is that some search engines are okay and will scan, but some do not scan some pages. Has anyone figured out any best ways to apply metatags using NOF8? Does anyone know what search engines will do if it runs into two sets of metatags for the same page?
I'd try asking this in the webdesign forum. There might be someone there who uses this type of software.
I suppose I could make a wild guess that the search engine only uses the first set of metatags, ignoring those that follow. If anyone with a better working knowledge of search engine than me knows more, this would be good to know.
Well Hiya LB - nice job answering your own question... U R correct. The second will be overlooked and there is no penalty that I have ever heard of. Matt (Cutts) actually rambled about it... just not sure where..... Are there any other questions we can help you answer for yourself today?
Even though there may be no penalty, it will still be best to only have 1 of each. The reasons for this is because the more content in the source code that you don't needed the larger your page will be in size and the longer it will take to load.
I have had trouble with having two meta-description tags. Those were different though - google showed the wrong one (not sure whether it was the first or the second). If they are the same I would agree that there isn't a problem.
Yay, I got it right! LOL, okay...here's a follow-up question that has been inspired by your answers. Perhaps I can answer this as well. My site is an older site. I had it in ODP long, long ago. ODP refuses to change the description. I don't think the article about the biker shotgun wedding is even posted at my site anymore. Google uses that old description. My question is: Does Google use site descriptions from ODP routinely, or do they only use them when they have problems finding the metatag descriptions? I don't have the answer yet.