« comScore and Omniture Partner Up for Digital Audience Measurement Service | Main | Google Analytics API Now Features Event Tracking, Navigation Data, and Increased Filter Length »
September 21, 2009
Google Asserts That Keyword Meta Tags are NOT Used in Rankings
Over at the Google Webmaster Central blog, Matt Cutts is reminding people that Google doesn't use keyword meta tags to rank sites for its main web search.
Keyword meta tags are used in the Google Search Appliance, but that's for enterprise search, not their main search product.
Google does take information from other meta tags, which it has outlined on this page over at Webmaster Tools. Meta tags discussed there include description, title, and robots meta tags among others.
Apparently, Cutts' goal in posting the blog was to help people stave off unnecessary lawsuits regarding trademarked keywords being included in the keyword meta tags of competitor websites.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on September 21, 2009 2:55 PM
Comments
The meta description doesn’t play a role in Google rankings,what is the use?
Terry September 22, 2009 3:43 AM
the use of meta description is mainly for the searcher to click your organic results. Think of it as a longer version of the ad copy in your ppc ads.
Aldo September 22, 2009 7:09 AM
This should be common knowledge to anyone who's doing this professionally. TITLE tags META Descriptions and on-page content are much better places to focus your keyword efforts.
Though we have stressed to our clients for some time that the META Keywords have no effect on their rankings, we still advise them to include META Keywords only as a way of improving their internal site search capability.
Eric Richmond September 22, 2009 3:58 PM
@Eric: I totally agree with you. I realized that Google seems to put much more weight on certain in-text-keywords in my meta-description and title than on other things. Needless to say they discarded the "keywords" as a tag itself long ago ;-) Good decision from my point of view.
Frederik September 29, 2009 11:06 AM
Hello Nathania.
Its really a very impressive information on your blog.The Google Webmaster Central blog detect that Google doesn't use keyword meta tags to rank sites for its main web search.
But we still use the META Keywords only as a way of improving our internal site search capability not for ranking.
Thanks!!
Kieran September 30, 2009 6:45 AM
