I was recently sent this question:

I noticed that some sites use the code below. What is this used for?

<meta name="robots" content="noodp" />

Answer:

First of all, this is a meta element. When used, it must be placed in the head of html documents. The meta element is used to provide meta information about a document. The meta element must have a property (name) and a value (content).

In this case, the value (content) is “noodp” – which stands for “No Open Directory Project”.

But what the hell does this mean?

Google automatically creates the title and description (or “snippet”) for each site – using the content of a page as well as references to the page that appear on other sites.

Google sometimes users descriptions within the Open Director Project to generate “snippets”. But what if you don’t like the snippet that is being used?

To prevent all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using information from the Open Directory Project for the page’s description, you can use the following:

HTML:

<meta name="robots" content="noodp">

To specifically prevent Google from using information from the Open Directory Project for a page’s description, you can use the following:

HTML:

<meta name="googlebot" content="noodp">

Further reading:

• How do I change my site’s title and description?
• More control over page snippets

So, do you use this on any of your sites? Do you find it necessary any more?