Google officially ignoring keywords meta tags is a nice validation of @microformats “no invisible metadata” principle: http://tantek.com/log/2005/06.html#d03t2359

The link is to a 2005 post on Tantek Çelik’s blog where he expands on the microformats principle that “visible data is much better for humans than invisible metadata.” Google’s announcement the other day that they do not use the keywords meta tag in web rankings didn’t surprise anyone that knows anything about search engine optimization. We’ve known for years that Google ignores the keywords meta tag (Google’s Webmasters/Site owners Help has a page about various meta tags that doesn’t say anything about the keywords meta tag) but, until now, it’s never been official. Still, I think it’s a nice validation of the principles of microformats and will hopefully give people pause when considering hidden metatdata schemes in the future.

On a silo website or within a trusted network, hidden metadata can be useful. In fact, in Google’s announcement they mention that the Google Search Appliance has the ability to match on the keywords meta tag. At web scales, hidden metadata is critically flawed. How can you trust that the hidden metadata is in parity with the visible data? The hidden metadata may be intentionally inaccurate (e.g. keyword stuffing) or simply have fallen out of sync with the visible data. Within a silo website or a closed network you can trust the metadata to be true to the visible data it describes and you can enact policies to keep your metadata up-to-date. However, there are no trust models yet that would make this work at web scales.

Microformats are designed for “humans first, machines second” (another principle). This makes a lot of sense since all machines eventually serve humans, even if indirectly through many layers. If the machine doesn’t ultimately serve a human need then there is not much point in the machine’s existence (unless we are taking about sentient artificial intelligence). For direct human consumption, hidden metadata is completely useless. For machine consumption, hidden metadata can be useful. However, hidden metadata must at some point be transformed into visible data, even if in a completely different context than its associated visible data.

This was the case with search engines that did use the keywords meta tag in rankings: the original context for the visible data was the indexed document and the new context in which the hidden metadata was transformed into visible data was the rankings of engine results. As history tells us, this scheme didn’t work so well. Instead, Google used the visible data that is hyperlinks to determine rankings. From Tantek’s blog entry (emphasis added):

Lesson learned: hyperlinks, being visible by default, proved more reliable and persistently accurate for many reasons. Authors readily saw mistakes themselves and corrected them (because presentation matters). Readers informed authors of errors the authors missed, which were again corrected. This feedback led to an implied social pressure to be more accurate with hyperlinks thus encouraging authors to more often get it right the first time. When authors/sites abused visible hyperlinks, it was obvious to readers, who then took their precious attention somewhere else. Visible data like hyperlinks with the positive feedback loop of user/market forces encouraged accuracy and accountability. This was a stark contrast from the invisible metadata of meta keywords, which, lacking such a positive feedback loop, through the combination of gaming incentives and natural entropy, deteriorated into useless noise.

“Of particular interest, may be payment for additional resource usage and a new runtime language – I can’t say what this language is, but you can probably guess if you’ve been following along with community demand.”

Looking at the issue list, support for Java is the most requested item followed by support for PHP, Ruby, then Perl. If you haven’t already, please go star the “support for PHP” issue (please don’t comment on it as it will email everyone who has already starred it – just star it!). Of course, I’m hoping Zend Framework is the framework of choice for all the App Engine specific APIs as well.

Let me start at the beginning (since that’s usually a good place to start). We decided to use Google Checkout and Google Checkout Shopping cart for one of our client’s projects. The reason was that they needed it done quickly, they were only selling a handful of products, and a full shopping cart seemed like overkill. One of the products they were offering was a donation on behalf of a non-profit.

Three days ago our client got an email from Google Checkout support indicating that soliciting donations is against their policies unless you are a non-profit. Google indicated that they had removed the Checkout badges from our client’s AdWords ads but did not say anything about suspending their account. We immediately removed the donation item so as to reinstate the Checkout badges and not risk having the client’s account suspended. At this time we verified that the the Google Checkout account was still working and had not been suspended.

Yesterday I sent an email to Google Checkout support asking if there was any way our client could collect these donations on behalf of a non-profit. I clearly indicated that we had already removed the offending item from the website. This morning I received a response that did not answer my questions, but instead said “We were unable to verify your organization’s tax exempt status. As a result, your Google Checkout account has been suspended.”

Our client never claimed to be a non-profit. We immediately removed the donation item in order to comply with Google Checkout policies once this issue was brought to our attention. Only after we had removed the donation item was our client’s account suspended.

I immediately emailed back to support explaining everything above and asking them to reinstate the account. This is a micro-site for a nationally known brand and is part of a larger campaign. Not being able to accept orders is a big problem. In the last eight hours I have sent seventeen emails to support and have yet to receive a response. I have also posted a message to the Google Group with no official response yet. If the lack of response is because the support department is closed, then why did they suspend the account of a nationally known brand while support was closed without first double-checking that that policy violation was still in place?

We went so far as to try and call the corporate number. The absurdity of that phone call was beyond imaginable. We explained the problem and the Google representative said we needed to know the first and last name of the person we wanted to talk to. Of course, the email we had received from support about the account suspension only had a first name. They would not forward us to a department either. When we asked for the Google representative’s name we were told, “I’m not authorized to give you that information.” When we asked to speak to their supervisor we were told, “I’m not authorized to transfer you to a supervisor. You need to have their first name and last name.” This was after we had said, “Don’t you know your supervisor’s name?” We were told to wait for an email reply. I’m still waiting.

Google Checkout is a service that Google offers to businesses. This is not a consumer-oriented service. It is completely ridiculous to expect businesses to use your service if this is the type of support that is offered. Google, fix your customer service – it is completely broken!

One last message for Google: I didn’t take “no” for an answer from Verizon Wireless, in my opinion one of the most evil companies around. I called them again and again until they bent the rules on their asinine policy. Do you think I’m going to stop hounding the company that claims, “Don’t be evil?” Wake up call: your lack of customer service for business customers is downright evil. I have been a Google evangelist for many years and this experience has been a huge slap in the face from a company that I thought was different.

Unfortunately Jason and I have been too busy to maintain GTalk Profile the way we would like. We plan to streamline the core experience and there are many new features we’d like to add. The 10,000 profiles mark, while not representative of a huge number of users, is a significant milestone because it shows a real interest in what GTalk Profile has to offer. Our goal is to dedicate more resources to the website and treat it like any other project that a client may come to us with.

One of the great things about Google Talk is that it’s built on the open Jabber/XMPP standards (GTalk Profile is actually a website for any Jabber/XMPP user, not just Google Talk users). This means that other organizations using these standards can choose to federate with Google Talk (and amongst themselves). Imagine if you could only send email to people using the same email provider as yourself. This is the current state of instant messaging and the Jabber/XMPP standards, with Google’s help, are slowly opening the world of instant messaging. Now if only some of the other major instant messaging players like AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger were to start using these standards and federating with others like good citizens of the Internet.