Re: Meta Data & Search Engines

Apart from putting in the meta descriptions I did also at the same  
time change the header. I now see the new header in the search results  
when I search with google for my IDNs page. So I assume that google  
has crawled my page.

I was expecting/hoping/assuming that when I have my browser set to  
english then I would see ""André Schappo's Internationalized Domain  
Names (IDNs) Page" in the google search results listing

And that when I have my browser set to Chinese that I would see "小山 
的国际化域名网页" in the google search results listing.

As per my meta descriptions:

<meta name="description" xml:lang="en" lang="en" content="André  
Schappo's Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) Page" />
<meta name="description" xml:lang="zh" lang="zh" content="小山的国 
际化域名网页" />

My page does appear in the google search results listing but my meta  
descriptions do not.

But I do not know what the expected behaviour of the Search Engines is  
or if there is even an expected behaviour with respect to language  
tagged meta descriptions.

André

On 11 Feb 2009, at 16:51, Suzanne Topping wrote:

> What do you mean by "So far google, yahoo, baidu and sogou have not  
> picked up on it or just ignored it."?
>
> I'm not sure how you are evaluating the SE's "response" but one  
> thing to keep in mind is that the engines may not be indexing the  
> site at all, may be bouncing off the site without indexing it when  
> it tries to, or just hasn't gotten back to your site since the last  
> time it was spidered. You might want to use the Google, Yahoo! and  
> MSN site map submission utilities to ensure that each of these  
> indices gets updated, and -then- evaluate their "response" to changes.
>
> Suzanne Topping
> BizWonk Inc.
> www.bizwonk.com
>
> stopping@bizwonk.com
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 7:26 AM, "André (小山) Schappo" <A.Schappo@lboro. 
> ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> A couple of weeks ago I put the following into my IDNs page.
>
> <meta name="description" xml:lang="en" lang="en" content="André  
> Schappo's Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) Page" />
> <meta name="description" xml:lang="zh" lang="zh" content="小山的国 
> 际化域名网页" />
>
> So far google, yahoo, baidu and sogou have not picked up on it or  
> just ignored it.
>
> Anyone know if search engines are (/should be) able to handle the  
> different language meta descriptions? Are there recommendations/ 
> standards on how search engines should handle them?
>
> Thank you
>
> André
>
>
>
> -- 
> Suzanne Topping
> stopping@rochester.rr.com
> 585-208-2916