Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag

[falkencreative]

In case anyone wasn't aware of this... Official word that Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag in determining search engine placement.

 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

[asdfghjkl]

I do not care to see the keywords tag influence Web search but it would be helpful to Webmaster if you used it in your Custom Search Engine solution and / or site-specific searches. There are still people in the SEO community who wrongly say that none of the major search engines use the keywords meta tag. Both Ask and Yahoo! still seem to look at it, but of course they do not allow it to have significant influence in competitive queries.

Edited March 9, 2010 by asdfghjkl

[JemsRoker]

Yes asdfghjkl, your information is ok, and I think google's creation of sites' titles and descriptions is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn't available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

While we're unable to manually change titles or snippets for individual sites, we're always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the snippets displayed for your pages by providing informative meta descriptions for each page.

Edited March 9, 2010 by JemsRoker

[krillz]

old news, they check the content, and use keywords from there. That's why it's important to have good SEO urls

 

e.g myurl.com/apples-are-green/

 

should have a content which is rich on the words apples and green, then you have a good optimized URL and content SEO wise. So key is have content that matches the urls. And do not use shitty non SEO urls like q=12391238&b?sadsad as that hurts you more than ever.

[LSW]

Do not ignore meta keywords... the policy spoken of here was put in place a few years ago & it was stated at that time that this is a usual change to keep spammers off balance. In the future , maybe near future as it has been a while, they will once again change their code once more and it MAY include meta keywords again. So add them so they are there if needed rather than have to add them later when you finally catch on at some point that they are used once more.

[litmusonline]

Do not ignore meta keywords... the policy spoken of here was put in place a few years ago & it was stated at that time that this is a usual change to keep spammers off balance. In the future , maybe near future as it has been a while, they will once again change their code once more and it MAY include meta keywords again. So add them so they are there if needed rather than have to add them later when you finally catch on at some point that they are used once more.

 

I think, you said the right idea about Google Meta keywords issue. Because Google is after all Google we will never know about the future or

 

Why not take chance of whatever we have right now

 

Thanks.

[jmb272]

I know for a fact they use the meta description, the extract of text that google has used for some of my websites are the Meta Description tags.

Still, Google isn't the only search engine.

[falkencreative]

I know for a fact they use the meta description, the extract of text that google has used for some of my websites are the Meta Description tags.

Still, Google isn't the only search engine.

To be clear, I wasn't saying that Google doesn't use meta tag information at all (for example, the meta description tag like you were talking about above), just that they don't use the keywords meta tag to determine search engine ranking.

[administrator]

Yep, ranking is not affected by meta tag information. Instead, meta tags information HELPS to provide context for Google and SERP descriptions.

 

Stefan