A lot of confusions here. Please take note: 1 The title tag isn't really a meta tag. 2 Google ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically makes its own description for the webpage. Other SEs will behave differently (no interest to me since 80% of the searches are made via Google). "Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization may decide it is no longer worth using the tags. Search Engine Watch doesn't. Any meta keywords tags you find in the site were written in the past, when the keywords tag was more important. There's no harm in leaving up existing tags you may have written, but going forward, writing new tags probably isn't worth the trouble." SearchEngineWatch.com
As for me, proper KW / anchor text; good contents; and a continuous link building the key to rank well in SEs.
That's what I was talking about. I don't want google choosing the content of the description under my site title that appears in the SERPS. If you use the Description Tag, YOU decide what will show up.
And to expand on what Christian said, what if they bring them back in the future? DO you intend on going back and modifying all your existing content (By that time it could be thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages) Yahoo uses them as well as the much loved (and unused MSN) from what i have read. Just think, if they change it in the future, your all screwed . Me and Christian as well as others will have the edge. Aren't meta tags part of the W3 standards? if they are, should you really disregard them. (Please note, i have no idea about standard, i only use what works )
i maybe new on here but i am certainly not new to SEO - i was actually a guest speak at an SEO/SEM conference last year in austin. For what it's worth - i still use my meta tags and will continue to use them, if they are not relevant any more then they certainly wont hurt you to still include them. However i am don't believe for a second you should exclude your meta description, this is possibly one of the most overlooked meta tags you need to use for call to action purposes....
I've actually found that the auto-generated meta descriptions work better than the personally written ones. I also click links that have auto-generated desc's more often because they usually pinpoint the keywords I've searched for, right on the page's content.
eh... then why am I now trying to rewrite my code to eliminate the thousands of pages that show up in google search results with the same exact META description and keywords I had posted in the header code? Don't have to double dare me... I just did. We'll see shortly how it affects my 400 plus daily visitors on the one site. Unless maybe the site is nothing but videos or photos ? I believe that is the root of my problem... there is very little text to index. I believe in my case... I need to figure out how to make my script display better META descriptions to avoid the duplication or the nonsense google wants to use in place of not having any META tags.
I for one will continue to add meta tags to my web pages, it only takes a couple of mins to do so and if its not doing any harm then why not? Even though on-page SEO only accounts for about 7-10% of a complete SEO campaign, i would like to get as much of that 7-10% of on page factors even if that means taking up a couple of mins to maximize my meta tags.
Title affect the ranking. Description Google often uses for snippet - it affect whether or not user would click on your site in SERP.
It is imperative that one has unique description meta for EVERY SINGLE PAGE if one wants healthy indexed pages with no omitted results. Without unique description tags googlebot will strip the first words from the html on each page which usually is the navigation text, thus your pages no longer look unique and those pages will be put in the omitted results which is not a good thing.
Look man as per my experience content is the king but keep on updating the meta tags as well because google is the surprise package who knows what he considers to give pr and serps so don't skip any SEO activity..
Meta tags are still have their own Important. Meta tags are a small indication of the content in the website, the website is what for what it does? This things can be know very fast and easily with the help of Meta Tag. Search engine know the page through meta tags and it will give much more important for website's traffic. So never ignore this factor when you strat optimizing your web site. Have a great time
Meta-Tags are always important for any search engine. Meta Tags important resources by which a search engine crawler knows what the page is about... Although there are some sites and blogs that do not care about meta tags because these sites are very big and are already established with a huge readerships. Moreover these sites or blogs don't relay upon search engine ranking for their visitors. But to get good SERP ranking your page must have appropriate meta tags.