28 replies to this topic

[Michael Martinez]

Jill has been telling people for years to ignore the meta keywords tag. I have been reminding people for years that Yahoo! and Ask still supported the tag.

Today at SMX East Yahoo! announced it had dropped support for the tag a few months ago (I have not tested their support of the tag in over a year).

I don't know what the status of Ask's support for the keywords tag is but I suppose few if any people will care now. I may run a test just to satisfy my curiosity.

[Jill]

Has anyone verified this to be true, or are we just taking their word for it?

I'm not sure I have any Meta keyword test pages set up anymore, but someone must, no? I think I'll go set one up now just to verify.

Hope it true, hope it's true, hope it's true!

[Randy]

I looked around and couldn't find any of my old meta keywords tests still up and running. And couldn't find any other public pronouncements coming from Y! or from others that might confirm it. But I did put a test page back up to see what it might or might not tell us.

[Jill]

I should know more next week or so. Seems it takes ole Yahoo quite awhile to index some pages, so I'm not sure exactly when my page will be re-indexed.

[Michael Martinez]

I haven't tested the meta keywords tag in over a year. I have been thinking about running a new test but it's not high on my list of things to do.

I'll look forward to hearing what others have to share.

[Say Yebo]

I should know more next week or so. Seems it takes ole Yahoo quite awhile to index some pages, so I'm not sure exactly when my page will be re-indexed.

Jill, do you test by placing keywords in the tag, but not on the actual page, then searching for them after the page has been indexed?

Keep us up to speed with your results. I have champagne on ice, just in case it really is true!

[Michael Martinez]

Jill, do you test by placing keywords in the tag, but not on the actual page, then searching for them after the page has been indexed?

Yes, that is exactly how it is done.

[OldWelshGuy]

I have a test page (pr4) that has 3 words in the meta keyword tag, the page has been up since 2005 and it doesn't show up for the phrase, anbd hasn't for years in either yahoo or Google, despite there no other page online for google to return!

Safe to say they stopped using the KW data a long time ago.

The only thing I did notice previously with my other test pages was that when i stuffed (and i mean STUFFED) the kw meta with words that were not on the page then the ranking suffered slightly.

This was in google. I took from there that google does use it asas a signal for part of spam identification, but not as a positive factor, or rather it has or can have a higher negative affect than positive.

[Jill]

Jill, do you test by placing keywords in the tag, but not on the actual page, then searching for them after the page has been indexed?

Yep, I use a nonsense word that shouldn't be on any other pages so that if the engine really wants to find something they might even look in the Meta keywords tag.

OWG, very interesting about your findings!

[BigStartups]

Same experience here as OldWelshGuy. I've got several sites (including some high PR site) where there are meta keywords that don't appear anywhere else in the page. Haven't shown up in Yahoo or any other search engines under those keywords for some time. Haven't even bothered to add keywords tags to anything I've worked on recently.

[Randy]

Woot! Goodie, then I don't have to wait for slow poke Slurp to get around to indexing my new test page.

I suppose they should update their Help Pages then, cuz that's like the first place I checked to see if they'd removed the reference there to using the keyword meta. As of today it still says in one item

Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list keywords for each page of your website. Use distinct lists of keywords that relate to each specific page on the site. Do not use one broad set of keywords for the entire site.

Source: Yahoo! Search Topics > Search Indexing and Ranking > Search Ranking > How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search results?

[Jill]

Guess what guys. Yahoo DOES INDEED index the Meta Keyword tag.

My page shows up for my word.

So they are apparently liars, or don't even know what their own engine does.

[1dmf]

Go get em' Jill

[Andy_Seo]

[Michael Martinez]

Mamma mia.

Holy mackeral.

...oboy...