PICS Meta Data Good/Bad?

We have had a email from a website called SafeSurf trying to get us to use these PICS meta tags in our website has anyone had any experience with them?.

Are they a good use of time or as I suspect a element of the Internet Browsers that no one uses.
Thanks
Richard

It would all depend on the type of site that you are running. The way it sounds is that your site is either:

1. An 'adult' related site that they would like to have ratings on
2. A 'g-rated' site that seems to have an issue with a keyword or two for their filters.

The tag itself won't hurt as far as I know, it's only used for things like Safesurf where it's like a parental guard against the kids seeing something that they probably shouldn't be looking at. I don't believe that it'd hurt, and it may help your site depending on how the ratings are viewed by search engines (I personally haven't heard anything one way or the other, so I don't think that it's a huge deal for them so far).

What do you mean by g-rated. We are a photographic website and do have some nude/ adult material but all of it is for art and is not viewable to children or logged out members. When we fill in the information to create these meta tags do you know if we should highlight these pictures even if they are not viewable.
ta Richard

That's a bit of a tough one. If the pages and files are all behind a login section you shouldn't have to worry about them as the SE's shouldn't be able to find them anyway. At worst I'd say add it in, as it can't do any harm, especially in a members area.

I don't think that the company that contacted you originally was really interested in the same things as SE's are. So, from their point of view, every page should be rated, doesn't matter if it's members-only accessible or not.