(2)
Google made historic news yesterday by declaring they do not use the meta keywords tag. Okay, I am being incredibly sarcastic. Google hasn't used the meta keywords tag for an incredibly long time and any "SEO" should know that. So why did Google blog about this, on the record? At least two reasons, (1) people continue to sue over it by claiming copyright infringement and people confuse the meta keywords with the meta description, which Google does recommend to use.
So there are official posts from Matt Cutts, the Google Blog and Search Engine Land trying to erase any confusion from people who are new to this space.
If you want to know which meta tags Google does pay attention to, see this FAQ. Plus, Googler's JohnMu tweeted that Google also does "not adhere to the "revisit-after" meta tag," if you wanted to know.
Finally, here is a video if you don't want to read any of this:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
Comments:
Jaxrolo
09/22/2009 06:07 pm
Why do people continue to use the keyword tag field. Does yahoo and otherse use it?
Chris Beasley
09/22/2009 06:21 pm
I got incessantly attacked for claiming that Google didn't use the meta keywords tag years ago. I mentioned it in a SitePoint article in 2002, but that certainly wasn't the first time. The main attacker, or rather the guy who took it furthers, maybe on 2004 or so called me up to apologize, which was refreshing. It is nice to have something you can definitely point to when this comes up.