Google Does Not Use Keywords Meta Tags!

It’s something that the vast majority of webmasters already knew: nobody cares if you put keyword meta tags on your web pages. Nobody cares because Google don’t care; and they’re the web search boss.
Other websites might use them, but ultimately, it has been so overused that it is likely nobody uses it. While we all knew this, it is only very recently that it has been publicly stated by Google. In a recent video blog by Google Software engineer Matt Cutts, the a question regarding the value of the keyword meta tag in main search results is asked. his answer? “Basically not at all.”

There was the famous (in web master circles at least) law suit that involved one company suing another because it used its brand name in keyword meta tags (the idea being to steal traffic from the search term). Although Matt Cutts does not mention the companies in the video, he gives the example of Bob and Alice, where Bob uses Alice’s name in his keywords. He points out that such lawsuits are pointless because the keyword has no bearing on main search results.

In truth, the keyword meta tag probably hasn’t been used by Google for a very long time. It was subject to a great deal of black hat search engine optimisation – with a lot of people spamming the feature. In the same video, Mr Cutts does mention the importance of the meta description, saying that if the quality of it is high enough, then it may well be used in the Google Search snippet (the piece of text that appears under the meta title in search).