[thelist] Meta Name Key words

[Lauri Väin]

Hi Adrian,

> This is more of an ethical thing .

It's also a legal one!

> When using key words how unethical would
> it be to use words the same as an competing site?

A snip from the MetaTagsFAQ I wrote (currently available only at request)

<SNIP>
27. I know this good ranking page with excellent meta tags. I'll just copy them
to achieve a better ranking in the search engines. Would it be OK?

No, it is NOT okey. It's illegal, it's theft. You can be sued for doing so. One
of the biggest court cases of this kind brought a settlement of $3 million
dollars. You wouldn't want to end up like that, do you?
</SNIP>

Danny Goodman, the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, has put together a page
detailing the lawsuits brought on revolving around META tags. I think the URL is
http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/resources/metasuits.html.

> There are only so many descriptive words out there.

Actually there are quite many words there, you might want to check out some of
the URLs below

www.wordtracker.com       // You can subsctibe to a newsletter, which
                                             // sends out 500 most searched
terms
                                             // on a regular basis (weekly?
monthly?)
http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp
                                             // This is one of my favourite of
this kind
                                             // It's the keyword database of the
SE GoTo.com
                                             // ... you can enter a search term
and it tells all
                                             // the combinations this word has
been used with
                                             // and the amount of searches
                                             // you can be pretty sure that
these words are
                                             // searched for many more times by
the major
                                             // search engines. My favourite way
to get
                                             // my meta tags "filled" :-)

> Could you get into some sort of trouble for it.

Look above!

> Would you place this in the same boat?

Not exactly, but it's pretty close.

> Obviously you wouldn't just
> cut and paste from view source

Rudy said "i drop it into a text editor and rearrange it first   ;o)"

I suggest you do the same, should you decide to copy others meta tags :-)


Yours,
Lauri Väin