Description meta tag, effective or useless?

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by bcombs

Correlation does not equal causation.

Just because every website in your example SERP uses meta keywords and descriptions, it does not necessarily follow that the meta tags cause the rankings.

Right, I know dude. META does not cause the rankings. And it is possible to achieve top rankings without them. I have a couple myself w/out using meta et all. Its when you have the whole recipe right > the rankings follow. There are soooooo many other factors that weigh in to getting good rankings in the top 10. IBL's, IP, Age of website, age of links, anchor, etc....

But, over and over again I see the same pattern happening for product specific SERPs - And you know who dominates most of those... Amazon! You'd think by know those peeps over there might know a thing or two about SEO. Is Amazon using keyword and meta on all their pages? Yes. Why? Because it helps them kick ass.

3 More Examples of Websites Using Meta: effectively helping them rank on the first page for their targets ~ All Different Industries

Example1 - Example2 - Example3

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[Rankenstein]

I think what Sideways is saying is:
All other things being equal, if you use your description tags properly and the competition doesn't, you win.

I agree.

[bcombs]

Originally Posted by Rankenstein

I think what Sideways is saying is:
All other things being equal, if you use your description tags properly and the competition doesn't, you win.

I agree.

I'd sure love to see evidence of that.

[bcombs]

Originally Posted by Sideways

Right, I know dude. META does not cause the rankings. And it is possible to achieve top rankings without them. I have a couple myself w/out using meta et all. Its when you have the whole recipe right > the rankings follow. There are soooooo many other factors that weigh in to getting good rankings in the top 10. IBL's, IP, Age of website, age of links, anchor, etc....

But, over and over again I see the same pattern happening for product specific SERPs - And you know who dominates most of those... Amazon! You'd think by know those peeps over there might know a thing or two about SEO. Is Amazon using keyword and meta on all their pages? Yes. Why? Because it helps them kick ass.

3 More Examples of Websites Using Meta: effectively helping them rank on the first page for their targets ~ All Different Industries

Example1 - Example2 - Example3

...

How do you know it's the meta tag and not something else? Again, you're showing correlation, not causation.

Google shows over three million BackLinks for Amazon. Might that have something to do with it?

I have not seen any evidence that meta tags have anything to do with rankings on the major search engines.