Its something that the SEO community has known for long and its now got validated by Google’s Matt Cutts. Google does not use Meta Keywords in its searches. Its a much abused meta tag and Google knows that and therefore does not use it in its searches.

What it does like however is the Meta Description. So it makes sense to write smart, apt, unique descriptions for each of your pages as Google uses them and shows them as snippets in its searches.

Nothing new here really, but its good to get Google’s word here on the subject. And yes, its now much easier to convince clients that meta keywords do not matter, atleast not with Google. And that there is no reason to worry if your competitors stuff their meta keywords with your brand name. That is just not going to be the reason for Google to divert your traffic to the competition.

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Called caffeine, Google’s new search engine project focuses on increasing size, indexing speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness. There aren’t many user interface changes to look forward to, unlike in the case of Bing. Google’s caffeine is more about a better search infrastructure and a better way of indexing as against Bing’s focus on user-interface.

Some experts feel that the results in regular Google and in Caffeine are pretty much the same. The only perceptible difference is in terms of the position of videos, images, news and blog posts. Caffeine is available to web developers and seo folks to try at www2.sandbox.google.com.

I tried searching for “blackberry deals delhi” and yes, the results were certainly more relevant in the caffeine returned SERP as against the current google SERP. Take a look below:

SERP returned by Google Caffeine

SERP returned by current Google search engine

The first result on either SERP page unfortunately gives me no info on a deal on a blackberry phone in Delhi. The results that follow are again a mixed bag. Not too sure if we have still reached the stage where search engines display exactly what you want to see (that is deals and offers here) and we do not have to sift through news links and repair centers links. I want a blackberry phone and all that I am interested in are some good deals currently on offer in the city I live in. Not where to take it for repairs! Display repair center results to me only when I am looking for one.

However going back to our discussion on the launch, it comes close on the heels of facebook diving headlong into real-time search – it recently acquired FriendFeed which has a real-time search engine of its own. Tempted to think if the project was started soon after Bing was launched…? It seems unlikely if Google’s pre-dominance in search will be challenged anytime soon despite Twitter and Facebook’s real-time search or the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Google is not one of those that lie low and rest on their laurels while competition pulls the rug from under them. With Caffeine and Google services for websites being launched one after another, it has proved just that.

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