USE OR NOT USE - the relevance of meta tags in information retrieval by search engines?

With the volume of information available on the Web, has the challenge of recovering this material, and literature presents several techniques that can help us in this process, such as use of catalogs, use of logical operators, query databases (metadata ), use of search engines - also known as search engines with specific terms related to the desired subject, or words that can describe the content of the desired page (the keywords), among other existing techniques, thus allowing ease of interface between the user and search engine. Another well-used technique is to use the services of Search Engine Optimization (SEO - optimization service sites for the results of search engines) is to conduct a responsible strategy to improve the presentation of a page available on the Web. The proposal of this work was verify the efficiency of meta tags in information retrieval procedures applied in the electronic journals in information science by search engines. We developed a quantitative survey, which covered the four major search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask, where meta tags was inserted in the search engines and query results tabulated and compared. The results of this research show is disturbing, because they contradict what is stated in the literature. Meta tags should have a role in the process of searching for information in an efficient, able to assist the user. However it was found that the use ofRELATOS DE PESQUISABiblionline, Jo o Pessoa, v. 8, n. 1, p. 60-77, 2012. 61meta tags were irrelevant to the search results obtained. We concluded then that meta tags is useless on the process of information retrieval through search engines, in the particular case of the sampled magazines researched this, yes. However we should note that the majority found the magazines used the same system and configuration of this may influence the results. Another important issue to note is that the results observed cannot be generalized to other content available on the Web, because there are a set of variables that were not included in this research.