So Why Optimize The Meta Description Tag?

So with so many search engines choosing to ignore the description tag, why bother to optimize it?

The answer is simple. It takes just a couple of minutes to optimize the Meta tags on the web page you are building.

While you may not influence the likes of Google, Yahoo, or AOL, there are plenty of smaller search engines that still spider the Meta description tag.

The largest of these is Inktomi, which was recently acquired by Yahoo.

Although, Yahoo has not yet switched its search results to the Inktomi database, there are still many search engines that rely on Inktomi results.

The biggest Inktomi audience comes from MSN’s web page results.

The web page results at MSN come after featured sites, sponsored sites and web directory results but nonetheless they are there.

While you are unlikely to have your Inktomi listing displayed on MSN for generic terms such as “computers” or “Compaq” you should see traffic from MSN for longer, more specific terms such as “refurbished Compaq computers”.

The more specific the term, the more likely that MSN will rely on the spidering technology of Inktomi to provide the search results.

And with OneStat.com reporting in April 2003 that 45% of all searches are for phrases with three words or more, you can see that there is still a large audience to reach by optimizing your Meta description tag and targeting crawlers such as Inktomi.