Meta tags are a handy tool that have been abused and misunderstood.
Meta tags started as a simple text way to designate search terms on your website. Often just lists of keywords, they were abused by websites that would put a lot of junk tags in their pages in order to improve their rankings. Search engines got smarter and meta tags have evolved.
Sunday
It all began one Sunday evening when a client asked where Google gets the summary text that shows up under a listing. Curious, I googled my name to find out what my personal portfolio site looks like in search engines. I was dismayed to say the least. As you can see Ask and AOL match Google and they are showing the most recent update on my home page -- usually the first line of a blog post. Not ideal for a main site description. Bing and Yahoo are both showing the text from my footer.
Monday
The next day determined to make my search results more relevant, we installed the Drupal Metatag module. Since search engines igmore keywords, I used the abstract fields. I began by putting a description in for the front page. Next I turned to the list pages that make up the gallery sections, blog list page, and shop page. Each of those received newly designed headings and descriptions.
Tuesday
Today was spent updating the Shows section on my website. It has been neglected and will take hours to get it up to date. I'll do a little each day while I wait for my front page results to show up in the search engines!
Wednesday
Dave led me to expect my updated results to take a while, but I'm impatient and have been checking daily (I know, twice). Today I looked and my site description has been updated at Google! A couple of hours of installation, configuring, and writing; two days of waiting and voíla a much better looking search result! As before Ask and AOL are also showing my meta tag description. Bing and Yahoo are unfortunately still showing the text from my footer.
Thursday
Bing and Yahoo are still showing my footer text.
Friday
Sadly, no change. Dave is confident that Bing and Yahoo will catch up and that Google simply scans with greater frequency.
Saturday
Ooops. I forgot to check!
Sunday
Bing and Yahoo are also now showing my updated site description! Success!
The meta tag module seamlessly integrates with Drupal nodes allowing you to customize abstracts on any type of content: blog, static pages, listing pages, etc.. The abstract field of the meta tag adds relevance and customizes the look to your search results.