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As far as I remember, the general consensus was the Google ignores the Description and Keywords tags.
We have recently launched a new site, with about 6 pages (just a basic skeleton structure - mainpage, contact, etc). The pages are very light on text (ie. not much content on the page).
The site has been indexed by Google now, and the text from the Description meta tag (which is not found in any page bodyes) shows in the search results under the URL.
It is hard to tell if the Keywords tag is used, but it certainly looks like the searches take it into account.
Has anyone noticed a shift in the algo towards those tags?
Description as well as keywords meta-tags are NOT ignored by Google.
Both metatags count!
As far as I know they always did. I just checked (again) one of my sites:
1. I searched for keyword1, keyword2,
, keyword7 from my keyword metatag. Actually I cut/paste the first 7 keywords. My site comes on third in Google SERP like this:
TITLE
keywords: keyword1, keyword2,
, keyword7, keyword8,
..,
keyword12,
.., keyword19,
..
If searched for keywords1,
, keyword5 (first 5 consecutive keywords from the keywords meta-tag) the site comes first.(!)
2. Similar situation for the Description meta-tag.
I do this kind of checking several times a year.
A few years ago (when search engines still indexed and ranked meta tags) i put some unique identifiers (fantasy strings) into the keyword meta tags of some of my sites to better identify if pages have been indexed and how many pages have been indexed. These identifiers were nowhere else mentioned in the visible text of the pages. Since a long time a search at google for these unique keywords doesn't return any result at all ... the sites are all still top listed for their targeted searches though.
Another phenomenon with meta tags is that google sometimes returns a page and displays the meta description if the searched word or phrase is only used in this meta description tag. Often these pages are flash or image based pages with no other visible text. It's the oposite of google's usage of keyword tags!
However, this observations say nothing about any ranking value of meta keywords or description.
The reason why i still use proper meta tags is that writing good descriptions and compiling a score list of *used* keywords for each page is a great training for copy writing and site structuring. You sometimes notice things you wouldn't have seen if you wouldn't have created excerpts of your pages. I normaly write a page's copy text, then i compile a scored list of keywords using Brett's Keyword density analyzer [searchengineworld.com] and at the end i write a excerpt (summary) and a create a good page title.
Another advantage of the proper use of meta tags is that you can always look to the meta tags of your pages and get a brief summary of what you wrote years ago.
BTW: that's the initial idea of meta tags - structuring and organizing web info. It's a shame that such a good idea is so abusive ...
Brett's article about Designing a High Search Engine Rankings Page [searchengineworld.com] is still a must read imho and gives a good picture of why meta tags could be important to content creation.
I searched for keyword1, keyword2, , keyword7 from my keyword metatag
When I do this, I place quotes around the search string (exact phrase match) and I get NO results from Google. If I search without the quotes then I get my pages. I just tried a group of well ranked pages again, with the same results.
I'd say the keyword meta tag is just not searchable and gets ignored for *searching*. This wouldn't automatically mean that keyword meta tags aren't counting to the ranking of a page. Imho, keywords are just keywords - either single words separated by commas or phrases separated by commas. They shouldn't count to phrase searches (quotes) if they are separated by commas.
I agree that continuing to use both keyword and description meta tags is a best practice...but...
In the Meet the Crawlers panel at SES, pretty much all of the engines, including Google, said essentially that... at the least... they were indexing the keyword meta tag and "reserved the right to use it."
Inktomi and AV, as I remember, suggested more strongly than the others that they were using it. Ask Jeeves may or may not use it... they left it "up to the relevance team." Google was similarly enigmatic, and they may in fact be the ones who said "reserve the right...."
The strongest indication that the tag might be useful for ranking came from one of the engines... I forget which... that suggested it might be good for targeting something like a misspelling of the company name.
I think Tedster is right, that it is best practice to continue using keywords and description... but it was pretty clear that you're not going to rank on anything that's at all competitive because you've included the word as a keyword.
I should mention this ranked #1 on G when searching for meta keywords matt cutts. I couldn't find it with the WW site search.:(
I jumped up several spots on Google for the most relevent selected keywords.
However, I'll probably go ahead include the meta's this week for the other engines.
Meta tags might count in some way but they don't count much and don't count for exclusive keywords that are not found elsewhere on the site.
This may be the case for Google, I dont know with any certainty, but just today M$N returns results for one site of mine where the only mention of these keywords is in the meta tags.
...just today M$N returns results for one site of mine where the only mention of these keywords is in the meta tags.
Or possibly in inbound links? I have seen Ink rank pages where there was nothing but relevant inbound links to account for the ranking.
However, I'll probably go ahead include the meta's this week for the other engines.
On one of my most successful sites, I've never gotten around to upgrading the meta keywords that were there when I started... there's been so much else to do... and the site has high rankings against lots of competing pages on all engines.
