Google using meta keywords and description

They are having a greater impact on results now

[TheDave]

I was a bit suprised when I was knocked from #1 for a certain common mispelling. The result that beat me had a snippet stuffed with keywords and phrases in the typical comma deliminated fasion. My first instinct was cloaked spam (and if you saw the ammount it probably still is considered spam - about 15 lines on a 640x480 word-wrapped notepad screen) but closer inspection reveals meta keyword and description tags stuffed to the brim, so it looks like these are gaining importance for google.

[WebWalla]

Are you sure the page didn't have the search terms in its content and/or incoming links as well?
Google has been showing meta-descriptions for some time as snippets, but these meta-tags still don't count when searching.

[Grumpus]

This also happens right before the update quite frequently.

G.

[TheDave]

It's a PR4 site and the only back links it has are from itself, DMOZ and Google Directory. No, the keyword doesn't appear in the link text, however the keyword does appear as a phrase (it's proper form) on their internal links. I'm not too concerned, the quality of the site is quite average, I just thought it was a point of interest.

[Adam_C]

The result that beat me had a snippet stuffed with keywords and phrases in the typical comma deliminated fasion.

By snippet, do you mean that the mispellings were in the meta tags, or elsewhere in the code?

[TheDave]

When I say snippet, I am talking about the short bit of text that appears in the google serp. Yes the mispelling was in the meta tag and not on the page.

[Adam_C]

Was it in the keywords and/or the description meta tag?

[TheDave]

Both, stuffed with exactly the same set of keywords/phrases