Official Google answers to common SEO questions

	Question	Views
1.	Does Google use the "keywords" meta tag?	6,172
2.	How do meta geo tags influence the search results?	1,453
3.	Uncrawled URLs in search results	1,433
4.	In the search results, Google will often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query – often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they die with meta keywords?	1,426
5.	How would a photographer gain any significant PageRank for his or her site when the subject that really matters-images-has no anchor text?	1,298
6.	Can you think of any reason whatsoever to validate spending more than 5 minutes creating meta keywords?	1,237
7.	It seems that having relevant keywords in URLs is very helpful. Does Google give higher importance to keywords in the path vs. filename?	1,203
8.	Can Google provide a way to mark a section of our pages as being less important for being indexed/snippeted by Google?	1,140
9.	An orphanage website I work on is showing up for searches on "girls in bathrooms" because they have an article about renovating the girls' bathroom! What do you think of the idea of a negative keyword meta tag to block irrelevant searches?	1,134
10.	In some queries I can see the date of the post/article in the description snippet (at Google search). Can I tell Google not to use it?	1,108
11.	If Google crawls 1,000 pages/day, Googlebot crawling many dupe content pages may slow down indexing of a large site. In that scenario, do you recommend blocking dupes using robots.txt or is using Meta Robots noindex,nofollow a better alternative?	1,108
12.	How would Google consider (and rank) a site that uses meta data and URLs in a language (Italian) and has the H1 of the pages in another (English) considered more appealing for users?	1,093
13.	Specifying an image's license using RDFa	1,090
14.	Will DiggBar create duplicate content issues?	1,078
15.	Say your index page has been cached by Google and then you change the meta description. How long does it take for a Google bot to recrawl that page?	1,073
16.	Does Google take into account the URL of an image when searching e.g. could domain.com/cats/lolcatz/m.jpg appear in a Google search for 'lolcatz'?	995
17.	If search engines rely primarily on textual analysis, how can a site that focuses on audio, video, or other non-textual content improve its rankings?	963

Question

Views

Does Google use the "keywords" meta tag?

6,172

How do meta geo tags influence the search results?

1,453

1,433

In the search results, Google will often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query – often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they die with meta keywords?

1,426

How would a photographer gain any significant PageRank for his or her site when the subject that really matters-images-has no anchor text?

1,298

Can you think of any reason whatsoever to validate spending more than 5 minutes creating meta keywords?

1,237

It seems that having relevant keywords in URLs is very helpful. Does Google give higher importance to keywords in the path vs. filename?

1,203

Can Google provide a way to mark a section of our pages as being less important for being indexed/snippeted by Google?

1,140

An orphanage website I work on is showing up for searches on "girls in bathrooms" because they have an article about renovating the girls' bathroom! What do you think of the idea of a negative keyword meta tag to block irrelevant searches?

1,134

10.

In some queries I can see the date of the post/article in the description snippet (at Google search). Can I tell Google not to use it?

1,108

11.

If Google crawls 1,000 pages/day, Googlebot crawling many dupe content pages may slow down indexing of a large site. In that scenario, do you recommend blocking dupes using robots.txt or is using Meta Robots noindex,nofollow a better alternative?

1,108

12.

How would Google consider (and rank) a site that uses meta data and URLs in a language (Italian) and has the H1 of the pages in another (English) considered more appealing for users?

1,093

13.

Specifying an image's license using RDFa

1,090

14.

Will DiggBar create duplicate content issues?

1,078

15.

Say your index page has been cached by Google and then you change the meta description. How long does it take for a Google bot to recrawl that page?

1,073

16.

Does Google take into account the URL of an image when searching e.g. could domain.com/cats/lolcatz/m.jpg appear in a Google search for 'lolcatz'?

995

17.

If search engines rely primarily on textual analysis, how can a site that focuses on audio, video, or other non-textual content improve its rankings?

963

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Official Google answers to common SEO questions

All questions with the tag “Meta Tags”:

The Google Q & A database is available to paid members