[Zenbone]

I've been working through my graphic design website for 10 years now, and I recently ran into something I haven't seen before.

(The name and meta-description will remain private, as I prefer to keep it completely separate from my MacNN addiction.)

Pertinent to the following, I should mention that my site has a respectable Google ranking, or so I've been told.

Let's say my meta-description is: "Flair offers graphic design, Web design and development, print production, image editing and scanning services." I just grabbed that off of google as an example.

In the last few weeks, I've noticed in my site tracker that my meta-description has been entered into various search engines a lot. I was puzzled but didn't pay much attention until this morning, when I followed one of the links from my tracker and looked at the search engine listings. There are dozens of other sites with my unique meta-description listed, one of them now being listed ahead of mine.

So obviously, the leeches find a site with a good Google rank and hijack the meta-description for their own evil, nefarious misdeeds.

The sites are mostly those crappy, useless directories which point you to other crappy, useless directories existing apparently only for the purpose of getting a good search engine ranking so they can make money from ads or something. Some of them actually have a link to my site, so in effect, they're playing an interception game of sorts.

Apart from the fact that scum-sucking leeches are everywhere and I can deal with that, my question is this: If I change my meta-description, will it have a negative effect on my Google ranking? Will it tend to neutralize any benefits the leeches are getting?

[turtle777]

As far as I understand it, the Google ranking has NOTHING to do with the meta description, but with how many sites refer to your site. The meta description only helps Google to know about the content and key words, NOT the popularity / ranking.

-t

[budster101]

Google and Yahoo for sure ignore Meta Tags and render them useless.

[James L]

Meta tags are rarely, if EVER, used for search engine placements anymore (and by anymore I mean over the last 5 years or so).

Originally, the keywords and description meta tags were used for this purpose, but then they were spammed relentlessly with the popular search words (hence the reason you found words like sex in meta tags for a furniture store).

The search engine's solution was to stop using meta tags for search engine placement.

I just quickly googled search engine and meta tag... I got dozens of articles, but here is one:

http://searchenginewatch.com/serepor...le.php/2165061

.... I didn't really read it, but you can find lots of info there.

Cheers,

James

[Zenbone]

Thanks all. Think I'll change my meta anyway, it bugs me what these guys are doing. If after a few months I see the trend repeated I'll just delete it altogether.