Using the same methodology as my previous observations, it’s clear (and unsurprising) Google and Bing 100% ignore keyword meta tags when ranking a page on a keyword search.
The test page in question disappears if I add the unique keyword in the meta keyord tags to the same query (if it is not on the page and only in the meta keywords tag).
So – it appears no benefit of having a keyword in the meta keywords tag on this level, for Google, if it is not on the page.
Bing seems to work in a similar fashion to Google, however Yahoo clearly apparently still uses the meta tag for ranking purposes as the following image shows…
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I still occasionally use the meta keyword tag purely for mispellings in Yahoo if the page targets a very commonly mispelled word. Trying to get common mispellings onto a page while still trying to look professional to the user is always a challenge – alt tags seem to be the only easy option that all the SEs utilise.
Not at all. Fire some links to the sites with very common mispellings as the anchor text. Worked a treat for me – though I think Google is a bit better with misspellings in 2010.
ok, but this one remains tricky of course: So – it appears no benefit of having a keyword in the meta keywords tag on this level, for Google, if it is not on the page if it’s not on the page … let me say this first; although I think google stopped reading keyword tags for years, I still put them there anyway for yahoo, especially because it’s very handy to pick up the right url for keyword research from yahoo to see if they all work out right etc, and for that those meta keyword tags need to be there. just in case somebody go check my page source to give me a hard time. ok, so although I think you’re right, we need to be sure and that means we really can’t let this little one pass by … if it’s not on the page … ok, let’s assume this: google does read the keyword tags, but it has some elements in place to avoid dirty tricks … like putting keywords in there that are nowhere else to be found, not on the page, not in the url, not in links … that’s suspicious in that case; all you proofed is that they’re doing it very good ;-) cheers, Michiel
This is based on my experience 3-4 years ago with google, so may not still be relevant: I was working on a tool to do some global substitutions on my website and as an experiment added the meta-keyword tag to each page. I used keywords from the page so they were all relevant, and was only doing what google does anyway (just not so well). What I did find was that within a couple of weeks my visitor numbers (mostly from google) had increased by 20-30%. That was quite a noticable improvement, and I couldn’t otherwise account for it. Whilst I don’t know whether this still helps, I always aim to include meta keywords just incase. Brian.
Interesting Brian I might try a similar test. But as you know, positions and traffic levels in Google can fluctuate for any number of reasons – some of which we will never know what’s behind them. :(
hi Shaun, As you said, “unsurprising”… :) … but good to confirm. Although Michiel does raise an interesting point… maybe they don’t count if they aren’t also on the page, but if they are on the page, then maybe they help… That said, I doubt this is the case, which is why I have and still think that meta keyword tags are WORTHLESS! Another great test and post! Steve PS. I wonder why Yahoo would count them?
Its not the “big news”. But it doesn´t affect google in a negative way, so i would still use it. SEO has one big trick to force google and co. Backlinks ;) and even more backlinks!