Meta Tag - Which Major SEs Use Them?

Meta Tags

[RBrisco]

I continually hear that only a few search engines consider Meta tags in their rankings but I have yet to determine exactly which ones do.

Does anyone know for sure?

Rosemary

[Brett_Tabke]

Ones that still use them:

Engine	keywords	description
Fast	yes	yes
Altavista	yes	yes
Google	no	yes(*)
Inktomi	yes	yes

(*) Google will use a meta description when there is no indexable text on the page. The meta keyword tag is next to useless and the description tag is basically like any other sentence on the page.

[RBrisco]

Hi Brett: Thanks for the prompt response. Given that so few engines care about meta keywords, how would you respond to a client's enquiry asking how many keywords should be included in the Meta tag area? We've seen up to 1100 characters.

[pageoneresults]

Hello RBrisco, welcome to Webmaster World. In reference to your question...

For the keywords tag, first order of keyword phrases should come from your title, then description, and then your first two paragraphs on the page.

Try to keep it to 20 words or less. Many of us use the keywords tag as a way to focus our on page content. There should not be any words in the tag that do not appear on the page.

Also keep in mind that many smaller SE's still use the keywords tag in their algo's. The way the landscape is changing regularly, one of those smaller SE's could become a major player at any moment! ;)

[Brett_Tabke]

Split off [webmasterworld.com] the misspelling side topic.

Ditto what pg1 said. Just use a handfull of keywords at the most. After that, you are into an area where the download time for the user on the extra kw's outweights their utility.

Using kws, we are talking the difference between rank (example) #941 and #942. They aren't going to make a difference between #8 or #9.