Do You Use Meta Revisit & Meta Robots Tags?

[critter]

Good Day All!

What do you all think of using the following;

<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="30 days">
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="FOLLOW, INDEX">

Do you use these tags on your homepage and inside pages?

Cheers

Critter

[dannysullivan]

The first means nothing to the major search engines. I don't recommend using it simply because it's a waste of time.

The second isn't required if you want to get spidered. By default, search engines will follow all your links and index all your pages. I joke that using that tag is like pinning a note to your shirt that says "breathe." You're going to breathe regardless of the note, so why use it? But make a mistake with that tag, as beginners might, and you could end up blocking your page from being indexed.

[mcanerin]

Danny's right both are a waste of time, especially as used above.

The only time the "index,follow" (or "all") attribute is used is for cascading robots tags, where for example, you wanted to disallow all robots EXCEPT googlebot.

You would do this:

<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW, NOINDEX">
<META NAME="googlebot" CONTENT="FOLLOW, INDEX">
But that's the only time the index,follow choice is useful.

Ian

[critter]

So if its been on the site for years should I remove or just keep it there as it hasn't caused any harm until now.

I'm one of these people who doesn't believe in fixing something that aint broke, although I have never used those tags before - and am inclined to remove them.

Cheers

CRITTER

[SanDiegoSEO]

I would say the first tag could cause damage if anything.

If it was to actually work, you would be preventing spiders that visit your site more then once every 30 days from visiting your page properly. Thus if the spider does do a week long cycle, you could be preventing it from doing its cycle, thus hurting your page.

I use the second simply out of habit from working for a particular SEO firm, that wanted it in every page. I don't see any harm it causes, so I just use it. I would agree that its not needed.