Meta tag repeated 3 times

Is there a good reason for this, or a bad one?

[commanderW]

Hello everyone - I've taken over and recoded an 'old-school' site. I found this in the head -

<META Name="Keywords" Content="a bunch of words, a bunch of words, a bunch of words, ">
<META Name="KEYWORDS" Content="exact same bunch of words, exact same bunch of words, exact same bunch of words,">
<META Name="keywords" Content="exact same bunch of words, exact same bunch of words, exact same bunch of words,">

Based on what i've learned here on webmasterworld, it looks suspicious. My gut says 'toss it'. However i would like to use one 'keywords' tag to put subject words relevant to each page anyway.
Is there any good reason why the previous coder used 3 tags which only differ in the capitalization of the word "Keyword"?

[edited by: commanderW at 6:11 am (utc) on Nov. 24, 2008]

[Receptional Andy]

Is there any good reason why the previous coder used 3 tags which only differ in the capitalization of the word "Keyword"?

Yes - they don't know what they're doing ;)

The meta elements are (as far as I'm aware) case insensitive, so essentially that's redeclaring the same element three times. I doubt it makes any difference to the page's performance, but it's obviously best practice to remove them.

In terms of the meta keywords usage itself, there have been quite a few interesting discussions over the past few months, including Are repeated meta keywords duplicate content? [webmasterworld.com].

[commanderW]

Thanks Receptional Andy - That link you gave is just what the doctor ordered ! As solid as it gets for the subject of the keyword meta tag. There are links from there that go deeper into the mystery of it's use and worth.

[Essex_boy]

Thats pretty poor and I suspect it would be picked up the Google webaster tools as a bad habit. Dont do it