meta tags and search engines

The Web was once awash with tips for tweaking meta tags. This was because although
these tags are primarily there to provide information about the document, they were initially
what most search engines used to categorize web pages and return results. It didn’t
take long for the shortfalls in the system to become apparent and for designers to abuse
them, and so many meta tags are today considered redundant.
Generally, search engines now trawl the content of the web page (including the contents
of the title element), trying to match a user’s search with the most important content on
the page. This is why strong use of semantic markup is essential—by correctly utilizing
headings, paragraphs, and other structural elements for text, and by avoiding overuse of
images for text content, modern search engines get a better handle on your content and
can therefore—in theory—return more accurate results to users.
Tagging and other forms of metadata are also becoming an increasingly popular search
engine aid, for both internal search engines—those within the site itself—and for the
search engines that return results from the whole of the Internet. Both are a means of
adding information to a website to aid users. Visual tags may show a number of keywords
associated with a blog posting, for example, enabling a user to see if something interests
them by the size of the word; search engines will latch onto the keywords and the content
of the piece itself. Metadata enables you to “embed” information in the page, aiding all
manner of devices, and potentially creating networks and links to like information. A form
of metadata—microformats—is explored in Chapter 8.
Despite this, it’s still worth being mindful of meta tags when creating web pages, for those
search engines that still make use of them—just be aware that they’re not nearly as important
as they once were (with the possible exception of description).