SEL: Do We Need a Search Engine "Ignore" Tag?

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Search marketing in the new media era.

January 07, 2005

Do We Need a Search Engine "Ignore" Tag?

After Danny Sullivan suggested, in a blog post, that the search engines should consider introducing a tag that tells the search engines to ignore certain content, FyberSearch took the lead and implemented their own "ignore" tag.

I'm still on the fence with this. While I can see the benefits, I can also see the extra effort needed to tag different parts of a site, especially in a blog which is supposed to be a quick and easy way of publishing to the web.

Another concern I have, is the potential for abuse. What's to stop a spammer from tagging content, that is not keyword rich or dilutes relevancy, with the "ignore" tag and adding artificial weight to the rest of their content?

UPDATE: Our very own Jason Dowdell has been working on a similar thesis and solution.

Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |

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