Keywords meta tag

Are the quotes required?

[Phil_Payne]

In the keywords meta tag, the name is a single token. So:

<meta name=keywords content="whatever, ..."> is valid HTML and passes validation.

But most people use:

<meta name="keywords" content="whatever, ...">

I've been messing with some of the many keyword review tools, and many of them don't pick up the keywords data if I leave the quotes out. Is this a bug in the tools?

(I'm posting in the Yahoo section because Yahoo seems to be the only search engine that exploits the tag and I expect to find experience with this tag here.)

[SandySEO]

Hello,

<meta name="keywords" content="whatever, ..."> is the right format. Don't relay on tools.

[coopster]

is valid HTML and passes validation

No doubt, however ...

By default, SGML requires that all attribute values be delimited using either double quotation marks (ASCII decimal 34) or single quotation marks (ASCII decimal 39). Single quote marks can be included within the attribute value when the value is delimited by double quote marks, and vice versa. Authors may also use numeric character references to represent double quotes (&#34;) and single quotes (&#39;). For double quotes authors can also use the character entity reference &quot;.

In certain cases, authors may specify the value of an attribute without any quotation marks. The attribute value may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z), digits (0-9), hyphens (ASCII decimal 45), periods (ASCII decimal 46), underscores (ASCII decimal 95), and colons (ASCII decimal 58). We recommend using quotation marks even when it is possible to eliminate them.

Resource: [w3.org...]

I would stick with the recommendation here from the W3 and SandySEO. By the way, Welcome to WebmasterWorld, SandySEO.