The META keywords tag, do we still use them or don’t we? Since Matt Cutts confirmed that Google do not use the keywords tag as part of their algorithm people have still been arguing that other search engines – in particular Yahoo –still are. Well Yahoo have now confirmed that they are using them no more which should finally put this META element to rest.

The META keyword attribute started life way back in 1995 and was used by major search engines at the time Infoseek and AltVista. It quickly became popular and was the most widely used META tag used. However like with many aspects of SEO people latched on and started looking for quick wins and so the tag became the subject of spam tactics. This of course led to irrelevant/poor search results such as spam sites and so from 1997 search engines began to place less emphasis on it.

By 2000 the majority of search engines no longer supported the META attribute and in 2002 AltaVista dropped it altogether. Even though this was back in 2002 the subject still stirs up some debate with people still believing they are important. However with Matt Cutts confirming Google’s stance on the matter and now Yahoo doing likewise it would appear that the META keywords tag is now unquestionably a thing of the past…

There is still likely to be a lot of doubters out there as the SEO industry is plagued with people thinking that the search engines are out to pull wool over our eyes. However this should without any doubt have put the final nail in the proverbial coffin…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under SEO, Search, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.