H1 tags ignored by Google - for Janeth : Seo Forum

dmilford · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 8:45 am

Quick experiment:
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/h-test.html

On this page there are two made up phrases that had zero results in Google, "HMS Sodfish Pie" and "uss mupet flan".

Page is now spidered and indexed by Google and searching for "uss mupet flan", which is just normal text returns the page above.

However searching on "HMS Sodfish Pie", which is in H1 tags returns no results!

So maybe Janeth was correct and Google is ignoring content in H1 tags. Really need more data though so has anybody else experimented with this?

yonnermark · Advanced Member Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 1417

For the page which brought back no results could you now try adding the same phrase in h2 and h3?

dmilford · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 9:07 am

Just added a couple of 'unique' phrases using H1/2 so let it cook for a couple of days and see what happens with them.

WilliamC · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 9:39 am

as far as I always thought of it, you needed to have a keyword in the body and the title for H tags to really affect anything. I may be wrong on this, but it is how we have always done things based on.

Snowblind · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 10:34 am

Wooh, really?
Can't wait to see how the results turn out, I currently do not use <h> tags...

Janeth · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 1:49 pm

Thanks dmilford,

It looks like they ignore them if they did not pick up a word that is made up. It may be time to remove <h> tags from my site and my clients sites.

Crying or Very sad

PhilC · Site Admin Joined: 21 Nov 2002 Posts: 13052

I wouldn't do that Janeth. I certainly looks like the H1 tag is being ignored when there is nothing to back up the phrase anywhere else on the page, but when there is, the H tags may still be very advantagous.

Darren, can you add the 3 words "HMS", "sodfish" and "pie" in the text but not together? Let's see if the individual words cause the H1 tag to be counted before checking them as another instance of the exact phrase.

Janeth · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:11 pm

I was not going to do anything yet PhilC Grin

dmilford · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 2:20 pm

Hi folks,

I've added (this AM) a couple more pages that are identical to each other with the same unranked rubbish phrase twice each. One page has the phrase once in H1 tags and once in 'normal text whilst the other is the same but without the H1 tags.

Should be interesting to see which ranks higher.

PhilC · Site Admin Joined: 21 Nov 2002 Posts: 13052

I've also started a test - with a phrase in an H1 tag and its constituent words in the body text. The words are seperated and are the wrong way round in the text.