Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn't use) the "keywords" meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob's site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her "keywords" meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words "AliceCo" to his "keywords" meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?
At least for Google's web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.
Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.
Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.
Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screenshot shows:
Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.
Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.
213 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 213 of 213Hello , this is chanchal kumar , i just want to know what is procedure to add my own keyword in the google search list. at the time when anyone type there query in search box it show my own keyword.
thank you.
You write that meta tag keywords are not useful in Google search engine but I read on another blog that meta tag is very helpful to increasing search in search engine. If search will increase then page will not?
@ rink justics
"As for leaving keywords in for "Meta Insurance"? No sure about that. Do so leaves an easy way for competitors to find out what keywords your going after."
meh it doesnt matter, 2 minutes of just looking through your actual pages is all i need to see or guess it accurately.
and i do not believe them 100% when they say meta tags are irrelevant.
it almost sounds too stupid to be true lol.
and anyways i have tons of websites that prove what they are saying here is for the most part false.
i wouldnt say 100% false, but there is definitely some misinfo going on here, im not the only one coming to this conclusion - there are plenty of other experienced SEO's here that have first hand eyewitness experience - trials and tribulations
thats great google got a nice policy
Nice piece of information. So stuffing irrelevant keywords is not gonna help with the Google Search rank for sure.
1. If Google do not consider Keyword meta tag then how we can rank our website in Google?
2. If keywords have no use according to Google, then why Google providing bids for keywords?
I'm pretty sure google has changed the way they judge meta tag keywords
As you can see my site:
www.buildyourownsolarpanelx.com/
It doesn't have much backlinks but still rank kinda high due to its optimized keyword in meta tag
Great article. Love how you’ve simplified SEO because it can be so confusing! As an SEO newbie, I had no idea about nofollow tags! Does Google regard them at all or is it best to avoid nofollow tags altogether?
how the most simple way so that our blog was indexed by google?
I am really confuse about Google strategies regarding meta, i have used 2 keywords in meta description and my website is in 2nd page on Google search in both the keywords and the most important thing is that both these 2 keywords are very competitive keywords.
Is the Panda shirt he was wearing that day a sign of things to come?
Not a good news for me. So far I think that meta tag is really crucial. :(
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