Google Announces New Keyword Metatag to Aid Crawlers
Have you heard about the new “Magic Under the Hood”?
Google has announced a new metatag entitled “news_keywords” that will enable news journalists to include keywords or keyword phrases to the header section of their pages. The hidden metatag will help provide the search engine giant’s search engine crawlers to find relevant articles on specific subjects.
Rudy Galfi, Product Manager, Google News, states in the Google News blog, “The Web has transformed both how news organizations report information and the way users find it.” He gives and an example of the web page title, “Wall St. Lays An Egg” to are article about the 1929 stock market crash. Though the title would be understood by humans, it may not be classified correctly by machine algorithms that might categorize it as biological.
The new metatag will the make it easier for the search engine crawlers to categorize news appropriately. Galfi stated:
“The goal is simple: empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users.”
Magic under the hood
Highlights of the new keyword news_keywords metatag include:
- The news_keywords metatag permits publishers to include a “collection of terms that apply to a news article”.
- The keywords to not have to appear within the headline or body text.
- The metatag is only part of the HTML code of a page and viewers will not see the “magic under the hood”.
- You can add up to ten keywords or keyword phrases in an article.
- The order of the keywords in not a factor as all keywords are given equal value.
For example, in an article about the Wall Street crash of 1929 with the title “Wall St. Lays An Egg” you might consider including following meta code and keywords in the HTML header of your page to assist Google News in comprehending what your content is about:
<meta name=”news_keywords” content=”stock market, market crash, 1929 stock market, Wall Street”>
The new metatag is one signal amongst many that Google’s algorithms use to determine a page’s ranking in the search engine results. Galfi explains that, “The news_keywords metatag is intended as a tool — but high-quality reporting and interesting news content remain the strongest ways to put your newsroom’s work in front of Google News users”.
Do you think that Google’s you will be using the new “news_keywords” metatag in your news articles? We would love to hear your thoughts.
Robin, you all are always giving us cutting edge information to use and share with our viewers! I had not heard about this. Thank you for always being on top of everything 🙂
You are most welcome, Livvie. This is exciting news for those in the web design and optimization world. Thank you for sharing!