There have been rumours around for a while that Google do not use the Keywords meta tag but now we hear it from the horse’s mouth.

What is the keyword meta tag?

Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page. You cannot see them on the website, you need to view the source code of the page to read them. Traditionally they have been a useful tool in optimizing your website for the Search engines.

A typical line of HTML code for a keyword meta tag would look like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Search engines, SEO, Google”/>

Many sites will have lines and lines of keywords seperated by commas as this has always thought to have been relevant to search engine results. Well now (as far as Google is concerned) they are not.

It’s official:

If you go to Google’s Webmaster Blog you’ll find a recent entry confirming that “Google disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.”

In addition to the official post, Matt Cutts who is one of Google’s Search Engine Optimisation guys, posted it on his own blog so I guess they really want to get the message across.

Shall I remove my Keyword Meta Tags?

Google doesn’t consider the “keywords” meta tags, but there are many other Search Engines that might use the meta tags for ranking the sites. Although it is the biggest search engine, it is not the only one so for Yahoo, Bing etc the Keywords can still be useful.

There is certainly no harm putting them in and it only take minutes if you know your subject, so we would still advise you to use them.