Its funny because I find myself circling around the Google meta keywords topic over and over again.  It may happen when I discuss Google keywords in the meta tags with fellow SEO or when I get into Google meta keywords discuss with clients; it seems to never end.

So, with this being said lets put an end to this discussion right now; however I have a sneaky feeling that it will never end.  Be prepared to get the truth on whether Google uses the meta keywords on your site or not…

I also wanted to briefly state that it has been a few weeks since my last post/article.  Well, I have been developing a new internet marketing forum that has been doing great.  I officially launched the forum earlier to this week to the general public and I encourage you to take a visit.  To date there are over 600 members on the forum, so I am sure you will find it more than useful.  Take a look for yourself http://shockwaveprofits.com/forum/index.php

Now that I’ve said that, lets get back to the Google meta keywords topic at hand.

Without giving too much detail, when I optimize a site I use single words separated by a comma in the meta keywords portion.  I do so for a couple reasons:

1 - I am able to clearly identify the keywords I am targeting in the meta keywords section
2 - Search engines disregard the comma I use for separation
3 - I don’t give away the exact keyword phrase should a competitor ‘spy’
4 - I can easily identify any potential meta keyword stuffing
5 - Google no longer uses the meta keyword tag

So, if Google no longer uses the meta keyword tag, why do I still include it? Secondly, how do I know Google no longer uses the meta keyword tag when analyzing/spidering/crawling a site?

I have read and heard hundreds of other SEO’s say ‘not’ to use the meta keywords tag.  I can somewhat agree with the views of those who say so, but at the end of the day I highly recommend that you keep the meta keywords included in your site regardless of Google.

The reason you should keep those meta keywords included in your site is because Google is not the only search engine on the internet.  You ever heard of ‘Yahoo’ or ‘MSN’? Thought so…. And hundreds of other search engines rely on the meta keyword tag of a site.  So, if you only care about Google then go ahead and remove your meta keyword tag; your loss my gain. 

Besides, don’t give me that ‘your competitors will find out what keywords you are targeting if you use meta keywords’ line of B.S.  I can think of 5 ways to find out what keywords any site is targeting in under 30 seconds at any point in time. 

Getting back on track, how do I know Google no longer uses the meta keywords tag?  Easy, check out the Google Webmaster Guidelines.  Nowhere will you be locate any information relating to Google Meta Keywords.  Search for it, spend hours reading the guidelines, whatever you want; it can’t be found. 

What can be found regarding Google meta tags?  The following page illustrates what meta tags Google understands and reads: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

The following is what you will find on the above Google link:
<meta name=”description” content=”A description of the page” /> 
<title>The Title of the Page</title>

<meta name=”robots” content=”…, …” />

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”…, …” /> 
<meta name=”google” content=”notranslate” />

<meta name=”verify-v1″ content=”…” /> 
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”…; charset=…” />

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”…;url=…” /> 
I don’t recall seeing anything relating to Google meta keywords, do you?  What do you think this means?

This is the fast and dirty version of my point but its obvious that if Google used and relied on the meta keywords tag, they would mention so; especially in the Google Webmaster guidelines.  Since Google has NO information in any way relating to meta keywords tag then Google simply does not use meta keywords tag anymore… End of story…

I hope you found this enlightening and I hope you read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and see for yourself that there is no such thing as a Google meta keywords tag.