Google and the Meta Description Tag

Does Google use meta tags to rank pages in the search results? This question has been asked time and again in search engine optimization forums. My opinion is a less than helpful, "Maybe".

Truth be told, at this time only Google knows whether Google uses the meta description tag in the ranking algorithm. Despite this, one brave man dares to withstand ridicule and abuse, and state:

Its very easy to prove that Google does not use meta tags to rank your site... Do a search on Google for a word that only appears in your meta tags and limit results to your domain. Its that simple. There is your proof. .
- Posted By Chris Beasley

Now, that would appear to be a good argument at first glance. But professional SEO's are careful not to assume anything without hard facts, especially the team here at Internet Marketing Research.net.

In order to determine whether Chris Beasley's test is valid, let's take a comparative look at another element of web design, the ALT text of images which are also links. Note: We are not referring to ALT text of graphics which are not links; we are considering only the ALT text of graphics which are links.

The Power Of ALT Text
Cause Once upon a time, BeartoothKawasaki.com had a header logo linking to the index page. The ALT text of said header logo was "Beartooth Kawasaki"; until one fine day I decided to change the ALT text to "Kawasaki Motorcycles".

Effect
A couple weeks later, low and behold, the index page of that site jumped from #20 for the search term "Kawasaki Mororcycles" to #2, second only to the Official Kawasaki Motorcycles website.
And, because we no longer linked to the index page with the ALT text "Beartooth Kawasaki", we saw a drop from #2 to #7 for the search term "Beartooth". (Note: It is back up to #2, because of the sheer number of newly acquired links with the link text "Beartooth Kawasaki".)

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Now that we've seen the power of ALT text, let's apply the "Beasley test" by changing this:

Its very easy to prove that Google does not use meta tags to rank your site... Do a search on Google for a word that only appears in your meta tags and limit results to your domain. Its that simple. There is your proof. .

to this:

Its very easy to prove that Google does not use ALT text to rank your site... Do a search on Google for a word that only appears in your Alt Text and limit results to your domain. Its that simple. There is your proof. .

Indeed, on BeartoothKawasaki.com the ALT text of the link to this page is "Ordering Info". It has had that same ALT text for several months now, but when we do a site search for "ordering info" - with or without quotation marks - Google returns:

Your search - site:www.beartoothkawasaki.com ordering info - did not match any documents.

If we assume that Chris Beasley's test is valid, we have just proven that Google does not figure ALT text into their ranking algorithm. Or have we? Is it possible that Google assigns a null value to ALT text if that ALT text is not supported by either on-page text or link text of off-site inbound links. The same may apply to the meta description tag.

This leaves you with two choices. Either you can believe the validity of the "Beasley test", and forget about ALT text as well as the meta description tag. Or, you can forget about Beasley and his so called "research". The choice is yours.

Read the Update to this article.