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There is similar collection in the joshbuchea/HEAD project, in DEPRECATED.md [0]. (It reminds me to finally gather and record remaining info about <meta n

by myfonj 9d ago

There is similar collection in the joshbuchea/HEAD project, in DEPRECATED.md [0]. (It reminds me to finally gather and record remaining info about <meta name="keywords" content="..."> that's missing in both documents…) [0] https://github.com/joshbuchea/HEAD/blob/master/DEPRECATED.md https://github.com/joshbuchea/HEAD/blob/master/DEPRECATED.md

OuterVale 9d ago
Keywords aren't (completely) dead (yet), unfortunately. https://bsky.app/profile/vale.rocks/post/3muylxyhg5222 https://bsky.app/profile/vale.rocks/post/3muylxyhg5222 Mention of usage by Yandex: https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/controlling-robot/metatags https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/controlling-robot/me...
- myfonj 8d ago
  Ha! Last year I did some preliminary research, and all contemporary sources I've found agreed that last public search engine stopped supporting meta keywords around 2018, IIUC. So good catch about Yandex, thanks for the headsup! Funny, how things get complicated :) This meta had very turbulent history in 2010s and refuses to die, apparently.
dchest 8d ago
Why is meta keywords deprecated? I use them for my custom website search. I don't care that external search engines don't index it.
- myfonj 8d ago
  Well from the (incomplete, as turned out) info I gathered it turned out that it was never standardised to begin with (unlike meta description, for example), so it did not even have to be "deprecated". (Like it ever meant something in the real world…) I am definitely for any obsolete mischief, so it brings me joy hearing there is vernacular continuity! (As for external search engines,FWIR, in its heyday some search engines briefly regarded it quite respectfully, but eventually due to SEO spam they either started to ignore it, or took it as a negative signal, allegedly. But as pointed out in sibling comment, it still survives in Yandex, what is quite surprising plot twist for me.)
  - dchest 8d ago
    It's recorded in the HTML5 spec under 4.2.5.1 Standard metadata names, which defines the correct format and parsing: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#meta-keywords https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#meta-k... So, it's standardized and not deprecated. It has this note though: "Many search engines do not consider such keywords, because this feature has historically been used unreliably and even misleadingly as a way to spam search engine results in a way that is not helpful for users." HTML 4.01 says the following: "This specification does not define a set of legal meta data properties. The meaning of a property and the set of legal values for that property should be defined in a reference lexicon called a profile. For example, a profile designed to help search engines index documents might define properties such as "author", "copyright", "keywords", etc." https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4 https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4
    - myfonj 8d ago
      Ha, I stay corrected! Crawling back under rock to re-read WHATWG and historical W3C docs to fill the voids… Note to self: Apparently, I mentally froze around 2009, so I have some decades to catch on. It seems the breaking point was after 2009 Hixie's WONFIX for adding keywords [0], at a time when both `keywords` and `description` were both swept aside into "MetaExtensions" [1]. The turning point I clearly missed came in 2010 [2] and got resolved through [3]. [0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-bugzilla/2009Sep/0083.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-bugzilla/20... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090205191845/http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions https://web.archive.org/web/20090205191845/http://wiki.whatw... [2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0162.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/016... [3] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7525 https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7525
graypegg 8d ago
Huh, a few of the examples/prose about RSD, pingback, and twitter tags follow the same heading order, and mention the same details with the same links. Like, it's really no big deal I guess. You were always going to find out this info from sources compiled by other people. But at least don't do the "I'll change some words and call it mine" high school essay plagiarism technique. There was clearly real research done here as well, it's not like it would've been that much harder to write it yourself. Edit: LLM's used as a context-aware thesaurus called out here... https://vale.rocks/posts/ai-usage#:~:text=Apart%20from%20those,other%20tools%20can’t. https://vale.rocks/posts/ai-usage#:~:text=Apart%20from%20tho... source: > X (formerly Twitter) now falls back to Open Graph tags when twitter:* tags are absent, making the dedicated Twitter Card markup redundant for most use cases. article: > X falls back to the widely respected Open Graph meta tags, making the Twitter-specific declarations largely useless. --- source: > The Twitter Card Validator was retired and the original Twitter Developers documentation is no longer accessible. article: > However, the documentation and card validator are no longer accessible (previously at https://dev.twitter.com/cards/getting-started and https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator respectively). --- source: > Twitter's Do Not Track support was effectively dropped following the platform's transition to X. The original Twitter privacy options documentation is no longer accessible, and the signal is not honored in practice. article: > Twitter also had a Do Not Track meta tag for opting out of tracking when using Twitter for Websites widgets. Again, the documentation (previously at https://dev.twitter.com/web/overview/privacy) is now inaccessible, and it seems the tag is no longer respected. --- source: > XML-RPC pingbacks have been widely disabled by default due to their use in DDoS amplification attacks. Use Webmention instead. article: > They functioned somewhat similarly to how WebMentions do. Unfortunately, pingbacks rather quickly became an avenue for spam and SEO-gaming, so fell out of fashion. Vulnerabilities allowing sites to be tied up in DDoS attacks also became widely exploited.

by myfonj 9d ago

OuterVale 9d ago

Keywords aren't (completely) dead (yet), unfortunately. https://bsky.app/profile/vale.rocks/post/3muylxyhg5222 https://bsky.app/profile/vale.rocks/post/3muylxyhg5222 Mention of usage by Yandex: https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/controlling-robot/metatags https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/controlling-robot/me...

myfonj 8d ago
Ha! Last year I did some preliminary research, and all contemporary sources I've found agreed that last public search engine stopped supporting meta keywords around 2018, IIUC. So good catch about Yandex, thanks for the headsup! Funny, how things get complicated :) This meta had very turbulent history in 2010s and refuses to die, apparently.

dchest 8d ago

Why is meta keywords deprecated? I use them for my custom website search. I don't care that external search engines don't index it.

myfonj 8d ago
Well from the (incomplete, as turned out) info I gathered it turned out that it was never standardised to begin with (unlike meta description, for example), so it did not even have to be "deprecated". (Like it ever meant something in the real world…) I am definitely for any obsolete mischief, so it brings me joy hearing there is vernacular continuity! (As for external search engines,FWIR, in its heyday some search engines briefly regarded it quite respectfully, but eventually due to SEO spam they either started to ignore it, or took it as a negative signal, allegedly. But as pointed out in sibling comment, it still survives in Yandex, what is quite surprising plot twist for me.)
- dchest 8d ago
  It's recorded in the HTML5 spec under 4.2.5.1 Standard metadata names, which defines the correct format and parsing: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#meta-keywords https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#meta-k... So, it's standardized and not deprecated. It has this note though: "Many search engines do not consider such keywords, because this feature has historically been used unreliably and even misleadingly as a way to spam search engine results in a way that is not helpful for users." HTML 4.01 says the following: "This specification does not define a set of legal meta data properties. The meaning of a property and the set of legal values for that property should be defined in a reference lexicon called a profile. For example, a profile designed to help search engines index documents might define properties such as "author", "copyright", "keywords", etc." https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4 https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4
  - myfonj 8d ago
    Ha, I stay corrected! Crawling back under rock to re-read WHATWG and historical W3C docs to fill the voids… Note to self: Apparently, I mentally froze around 2009, so I have some decades to catch on. It seems the breaking point was after 2009 Hixie's WONFIX for adding keywords [0], at a time when both `keywords` and `description` were both swept aside into "MetaExtensions" [1]. The turning point I clearly missed came in 2010 [2] and got resolved through [3]. [0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-bugzilla/2009Sep/0083.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-bugzilla/20... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090205191845/http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions https://web.archive.org/web/20090205191845/http://wiki.whatw... [2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/0162.html https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Feb/016... [3] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7525 https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7525

graypegg 8d ago

Huh, a few of the examples/prose about RSD, pingback, and twitter tags follow the same heading order, and mention the same details with the same links. Like, it's really no big deal I guess. You were always going to find out this info from sources compiled by other people. But at least don't do the "I'll change some words and call it mine" high school essay plagiarism technique. There was clearly real research done here as well, it's not like it would've been that much harder to write it yourself. Edit: LLM's used as a context-aware thesaurus called out here... https://vale.rocks/posts/ai-usage#:~:text=Apart%20from%20those,other%20tools%20can’t. https://vale.rocks/posts/ai-usage#:~:text=Apart%20from%20tho... source: > X (formerly Twitter) now falls back to Open Graph tags when twitter:* tags are absent, making the dedicated Twitter Card markup redundant for most use cases. article: > X falls back to the widely respected Open Graph meta tags, making the Twitter-specific declarations largely useless. --- source: > The Twitter Card Validator was retired and the original Twitter Developers documentation is no longer accessible. article: > However, the documentation and card validator are no longer accessible (previously at https://dev.twitter.com/cards/getting-started and https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator respectively). --- source: > Twitter's Do Not Track support was effectively dropped following the platform's transition to X. The original Twitter privacy options documentation is no longer accessible, and the signal is not honored in practice. article: > Twitter also had a Do Not Track meta tag for opting out of tracking when using Twitter for Websites widgets. Again, the documentation (previously at https://dev.twitter.com/web/overview/privacy) is now inaccessible, and it seems the tag is no longer respected. --- source: > XML-RPC pingbacks have been widely disabled by default due to their use in DDoS amplification attacks. Use Webmention instead. article: > They functioned somewhat similarly to how WebMentions do. Unfortunately, pingbacks rather quickly became an avenue for spam and SEO-gaming, so fell out of fashion. Vulnerabilities allowing sites to be tied up in DDoS attacks also became widely exploited.