W3C Standards Ignored by Search Engines Since 2009
Back in 2009, Google officially confirmed what many in the web development community had long suspected: the keywords meta tag was completely ignored in web search rankings. But this was just the tip of the iceberg. What many don’t realize is that the W3C standardized numerous other meta tags that search engines have quietly abandoned over the years. Let’s take a nostalgic journey through these digital dinosaurs.
The Infamous Keywords Meta Tag
The <meta name="keywords" content="..."> tag was once the crown jewel of SEO optimization. In the mid-1990s, search engines like AltaVista and Infoseek heavily relied on this tag to index content. Webmasters would carefully craft comma-separated keyword lists hoping to rank higher in search results.