So true. While some other search engines still take meta tags in high regard, google practically ignores them. Afterall, anyone could just put whatever they want in them - even if it has nothing to do with what the site is about. Instead, google spiders the content on each page and comes up with relevancy keywords.

Then, google uses its PR rating to decide how "important" a page is. That is, how many external links link into the page. After all, if other people link to the site, that must mean it has good stuff, no?

thats only sorta true

google does use metta tags still to display adsense but it also uses keywords too i noticed when i changed my keywords to a ton of microsoft stuff all my AS became MS releated ;D

Really? I didn't know that ... good 2 know.

Quick question on google,

If my website is update say weekly, do I have to re submit my site to google for it to schedule the site for another crawl? Or will google make a record of my URL and re-crawl after a period of time?

Google spiders web sites periodically, so you don't have to worry about resubmitting. That goes with other search engines as well. If you want to check out cached versions of your site or any other site for that matter, you can check out: http://www.waybackmachine.org/ - it's interesting. You can see what Macromedia's web site looked like in 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/199610221...acromedia.com/

That is such BS. Forums have generic meta-tags but still have great relevancy for adsense where threads are spidered.

Google doesn't give meta-tags any weight in themselves. Proof:

http://www.seo-lab.com/seo-lab-tests/meta-tags/

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean to say that Google doesn't reference meta-tags for ranking purposes - which is an old Inktomi tactic and not necessarily exclusive. Caol is quite right about generic meta-tags as well - forum threads can do very well for non-competitive keyword/phrase searches, but still lack the meta-tags relating to that topic.

Yes, both Carol and Brian have a very valid point. Tags by themselves are pointless, but when it comes to Google, tags are imprtant for determining whether a site is really based on what it's keywords tag says. By itself, the tag is meaningless...

Is anyone going to offer proof that Google even references meta-tags tho'? IT sounds like one of those rumours that get spread around forums as fact without ever havin been tested.