It’s Official – Google No Longer Uses Meta Tag Keywords Or Description To Rank Your Site

Google Does Not Use The Keywords Or Page Description Meta Tag To Help Determine Web Site Rankings!

That is right! Google officially made the ‘we don’t care about keywords in meta tags‘ announcement on their blog this week. Anyone that wants to learn more should read the article as it is very inciteful. Some key points to take away from this:

They also stated in the above post that while they do use the ‘Page Description’ tag in the search result, it ALSO is not a factor in ranking. (they kinda snuck that one in for people that were REALLY reading!)

Meta Tags

Why have they stopped? Keyword spamming. In the early 2000’s search engines used meta tags extensively to decide what was on a web page. Since there was economic benefit to ranking well on search engines, savvy webmasters were stuffing the keyword tag with lots of keywords. So much so that they became irrelevant. Now the bots have becoming far more sophisticated in search results.

Will they ever use this tag again? On the blog they basically said that it is possible but not very likely.

Maybe it is time to start turning your attention to things that WILL help your site rank well. Unless you are holding out hope that both Yahoo! and Bing care as well.

Post By DJ (195 Posts)

DJ has been a high profile Internet Marketer since 2001. He is the CEO of TechWyse and as a passionate member of the internet marketing industry is a key contributor on the 'Rise To The Top' Blog.

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5 Comments

DJ
on

November 3, 2010 at 6:29 pm

I have recently been working with a client that enjoyed this post but ask me about the position that Yahoo! has on the Meta Keyword tag and whether they are using it for search engine rankings. I found this on search engine land and it shows Yahoo! no longer supports it either. http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-search-no-longer-uses-meta-keywords-tag-27303

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Latha
on

October 7, 2009 at 8:42 am

Jay, Bing and Yahoo don’t use meta tags as well I believe. Also, read in one the blog posts that Google is well aware of Duplicate content issues, ranging from copying titles, keywords, site content. They have a mechanism to determine who is fake and who is the original author.

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Latha
on

October 2, 2009 at 4:18 am

Found this post entailing which meta tags Google understands.
Google understands the following meta tags (and related items):
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812
According to the post is being considered by Google.
I believe description will be considered.

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Jay
on

September 29, 2009 at 12:40 am

So as meta keywords are not used and meta description is used only for showing the search results snippet, does this mean that now only meta title is relevant for Google search engine? And what happens if meta title is copied from other websites? what about Bing in this regard?

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Justin. B
on

September 28, 2009 at 11:17 pm

Not big news at all.
Google’s attitude towards ‘keywords meta tag’ is a known one. They don’t play a part in deciding the ranking of a site, but not all meta tags. Google wants to re-affirm this in the wake of people suing each other for meta tag keyword theft.

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