Does Google use meta keywords? The short answer and what to do instead

Google's SEO Starter Guide lists meta keywords among the things you shouldn't focus on, and says it directly: Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag.

That isn't new. In a Search Central blog post from September 21, 2009, Google wrote that it doesn't use the keywords meta tag in our web search ranking. The post now carries a note that some of its information may be outdated, followed by a clear statement that Google still doesn't support the keywords meta tag.

The 2009 post was specific about scope. Google did sell an enterprise search appliance that could match meta tags, but the post says it was completely separate from Google's main web search, which it said disregards keywords meta tag completely.

The 2009 post explains the history. In the early days, search engines judged pages only by what was on them, and the keywords meta tag became a place where people could stuff often-irrelevant keywords that visitors never saw. Because the tag was so often abused, Google began disregarding it many years before that post was written.

The tag failed because it was invisible. Anyone could claim to be about anything, and readers had no way to check.

Google still treats that behavior as a problem when it happens on the visible page. Its spam policies define keyword stuffing as filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings, often in a list or group, unnaturally or out of context. The meta keywords tag was keyword stuffing that readers couldn't even see.

Google's 2009 post used a memorable example. One business owner noticed that a competitor had copied the business's keywords into another meta tag, and even added the company's name. Should that be concerning? For Google's web search results, Google's answer was no, because the tag has no effect on ranking.

There is one practical side effect to consider: the tag sits in your page's source code, where anyone can read it. If it lists the phrases you care about, it can tell a competitor which keywords you're chasing, while doing nothing for you in Google.

No. The same 2009 post says Google does support several other meta tags. The one most site owners should care about is the meta description.

Google says it primarily uses the content on the page to create the snippet in search results, and that it sometimes uses the meta description when that gives users a more accurate description of the page. Google's snippet documentation also offers a few useful rules:

• Write a unique description for each page.
• Avoid descriptions that are long strings of keywords, which Google says are less likely to be displayed as a snippet.
• Don't worry about an exact length. Google says there's no limit, but the snippet is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width.

If you want control over how Google treats a page, two other tags matter more than meta keywords ever did.

• Snippet controls. Google's snippet documentation explains that you can prevent snippets from being created and shown for a page, or set a maximum snippet length with the max-snippet meta tag.
• Noindex. To keep a page out of Google entirely, Google's robots.txt guide says to block indexing with noindex or password-protect the page. A robots.txt file alone isn't a way to keep a page out of Google.

Keywords still matter. They just belong where people can see them. Google's starter guide explains that the title link in search results draws on sources including the words inside the title element and other headings on the page. So the words your customers use should appear naturally in your page titles, your headings and your content.

Two cautions from the same guide:

• Don't stuff. Google says excessively repeating the same words, even in variations, is tiring for users and is against its spam policies.
• Don't force keywords into your domain. Google advises doing what's best for your business when you name your site.

If your website has a meta keywords field, you don't need to fill it in for Google. Spend that time on the things Google does read: a clear title, a helpful meta description and content that answers the questions behind the keyword.

Removing an existing tag is optional housekeeping. Since Google doesn't use it, deleting it won't change your Google rankings either way, so take it out whenever you next edit the page template.

The meta keywords tag is a useful reminder. Google stopped trusting a tag that readers never saw, and the work that lasts is the work readers can see.