meta tags and Inktomi

[FHRiia]

I am involved in creating HTML pages of a government laboratory newsletter. The lab's site can be searched with an Inktomi search engine. I know Inktomi used to use HTML meta tag keywords in their relevancy rankings, but will an Inktomi search still use meta tags, now that they're part of Yahoo?

[David Wallace]

I believe Yahoo still indexes the meta description tag and keyword tag. I would think that the keyword tag amounts for much weight in the algorithm. I know that Yahoo does not use the meta description tag to display a description in the SERPs in most cases but rather will use a snippet of text from the html copy, depending on what the search query is.

That being said, I would still make sure you have a meta keyword tag but would not recommend putting too much time into it. I usually develop one and then repeat the same one on all the site's pages.

[AussieWebmaster]

If you are listed in the Yahoo directory they generally use that short description in their results.