9 replies to this topic

[yannis]

While checking some results for fisicx recent post, I came across this:



As you can see, either the parser left the title= in by mistake or more likely the title is left in and indexed! (see the first snippet!)


Yannis

[saschaeh]

I'm not sure i understand?

[lee.n3o]

I suppose the age old follow up question is does google give any weight to the title attribute in its ranking algoritm? Or does it just index titles as well looking aout for spammers that stuff the attribute with all kinds of keywords?

[A.N.Onym]

The title attribute on BBC doesn't have the " on them, so I'd guess that Google ate that up as text. Theoretically speaking, if G read it as a title attribute, it wouldn't be displaying the "title=" part, but would focus on the content.

(Edit: Actually, the title= piece was in the meta description, so Google used it.)

From the old "does G consider title attribute" discussion, I vaguely recall that it doesn't. Same for images, as far as I recall.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 27 March 2008 - 03:27 AM.

[lee.n3o]

Ahhh good spot Yuri...

Although I have seen alot of 'old skool' applications (in ASP anyway) where the developers have written whole pages (Tables, links, forms etc...) all without "" seperating the attribute from the value - So I'm not sure why its just decided to do read it like that on this title att

Ahhh the wonders of the mystic algorithms hey...

[A.N.Onym]

Browsers don't need "s to display content for you.

I just looked again closely and noticed that that title= piece without the "s is actually in the meta description. Apparently, BBC itself put it there, so Google simply trusted the site and used it.

In the actual document, the "s are present.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 27 March 2008 - 03:27 AM.

[lee.n3o]

That would explain it.. Good hunting Yuri ;-)

[yannis]

Just to clarify here is the link to the bbc page.

The screenshot was captured as part of a query.

Lee the BBC designers had the inverted commas. The html seems quite standard. The Google algorithm left the text in as well as the title= (as this can be removed with fairly easily), I presume it was left in intentionally.

The snippet WAS NOT PART OF ANY META. It was part of the page. proving that if there is no meta description Google will pick up relevant text from the page.

Two conclusions:

(01) Include titles into your links. Google treats them as part of page text (in my opinion they gain an equivalent weight to about anchor text).

or

(02) Google programmers are struggling with their regex! Highly unlikely.



Yannis

Edited by yannis, 27 March 2008 - 07:28 AM.

[lee.n3o]

Hmmm so it takes another twist... ... I do love threads like this!

[A.N.Onym]

Sorry, Yannis, but how do you explain this

<meta name="description" content="See Section 13: Editorial Integrity for guidance on
/guidelines/editorialguidelines/onguide/editorial/linkstoexternal.shtml title=links to external sites >links to external sites and Section 8:
/guidelines/editorialguidelines/onguide/harm/harma..." />

It looks like a meta description to me. And, in fact, your screenshot shows the meta description from the very beginning to the moment, when it either hit a character limit or encountered a >.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 27 March 2008 - 09:56 PM.