views:

176

answers:

4

So the title says it all I guess...

I was wondering if there was a limit, according to the standards, that we should respect while entering keywords in the <meta name="keywords" /> tag inside the HEAD of any HTML page.

Please note, I'm not asking how specific search engines take this tag into consideration, but about standards.

EDIT: modified the title - meant 'keywords', not 'description'

A: 

AFAIK, Google will ignore META tags, and so do them most others. As far as the HTML standard goes, there shouldn't be any limit as such.

Priyank Bolia
Google does not ignore the meta description. It will show up as description of the search result. It does however ignore the meta keywords.
BalusC
The question author is anyway concerned about the Keywords.
Priyank Bolia
The topic title did contain `description` but it was edited afterwards.
BalusC
+1  A: 

There is no limit in the w3c docs. Browsers are free to implement meta data as they choose, however.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4

Keith Rousseau
A: 

There is no technical limit. You're dependent on the searchbot/searchengine used.

The <meta name="description"> should be the, uh, description of your website which would show up in the search results. The limit is about 150~200 characters.

The <meta name="keywords"> is ignored by the most search bots as they are smart enough to filter the keywords from the actual content. As far only Yahoo uses it (yet). The limit is around 50 words.

BalusC
Google is now using 350 characters from the meta tag DESCRIPTION; I don't what other search engines do.
kiamlaluno
Reference please? I still see ~150 chars throughout the search results, regardless the search keywords used.
BalusC
@One who downvoted at 2009-12-18 05:51:54Z: Downvoting without commenting is lame :)
BalusC
A: 

yes, of course there is a limit. as a seo professional I can suggest it's not more than 255 characters long. http://www.betawebsolution.com

betawebsolution