- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:37:06 -0800
- To: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Cc: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
I support this change proposal. While I know that many search engines do not pay attention to meta/@name="keywords", given the fact that it is widely used and "known" among authors, as well as potentially useful in other settings, I think it should remain conforming and defined. For example I could see it used in internal document management systems, or browsers could use it in features like bookmark search. / Jonas On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote: > > The Chairs have not seen any discussion of this Change Proposal. Can Working > Group participants please provide their thoughts on this proposal? We would > like to see some discussion before we call for counter-proposals, call for > consensus, or seek some other solution. > > Regards, > Maciej > > On Feb 7, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Julian Reschke wrote: > >> SUMMARY >> >> HTML5 makes unregistered values of meta/@name non-conforming. This will >> affect many pages that use meta/@name = "keywords". >> >> This change proposal makes that value conforming again. >> >> >> RATIONALE >> >> HTML4 did not put conformance requirements on meta/@name values, nor did >> it define specific ones. It did however mention the keyword (sic) "keywords" >> in [1]. >> >> According to [2], "keywords" is the most widely used value for meta/@name. >> >> HTML5 makes documents that use unregistered names non-conforming, and >> makes both the registration procedure and conformance rely on a Wiki in >> WhatWG space. This is a separate issue that we should discuss once the >> related issue about the @rel registry is resolved (ISSUE-27). >> >> With this change to document conformance, all documents using meta/@name= >> "keywords" will become invalid. Note that the current implementation of the >> HTML5 validator (as of January 2010) does not implement checking of >> meta/@name yet, so this change has not been visible to people trying to >> validate their existing pages. >> >> It has been pointed out that search engines have stopped to consider >> keyword information, but apparently this isn't true for all of them >> (see [3], which I have verified). >> >> However, this is not sufficient reason to make it's use non-conforming; >> there are other use cases for embedding keywords, such as in controlled >> environments (building navigation pages / elements from keywords inside >> a content management system has been mentioned). >> >> >> DETAILS >> >> Under "4.2.5.1 Standard metadata names", add: >> >> "keywords >> >> Contains a comma-separated list of keywords relevant to the page. >> >> Note that many search engines have stopped to consider keyword >> information as relevant because it has been used unreliably or even >> misleading. Recipients are recommended to use this information only >> when there's sufficient confidence in the reliability of this >> information, for instance in controlled environments such as sites >> generated from a content management system. >> >> IMPACT >> >> 1. Positive Effects >> >> Documents using meta/@name="keywords" will be conforming again. >> >> 2. Negative Effects >> >> People may continue to believe that all search engines will use this data, >> and spending additional time providing it for some of them. This can be >> mitigated by explaining this in the spec, as proposed above. >> >> 3. Conformance Classes Changes >> >> Documents using meta/@name="keywords" will be conforming again. >> >> 4. Risks >> >> None. >> >> >> REFERENCES >> >> [1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#edef-META> >> [2] <http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/metadata.html> >> [3] <http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/ranking-02.html> >> > > >
Received on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 04:37:58 UTC