Google Has Ignored the Keywords Meta Tag Since 2009
A lot of people still believe that filling in <meta name="keywords"> helps their search ranking. But Google officially announced 17 years ago that it strips this tag out of ranking calculations entirely. This guide lays out the background of that announcement, why the habit of using it survives anyway, and which meta elements actually do affect ranking today.
1. What Google actually announced in September 2009
In September 2009, Google's Webmaster Central Blog explicitly stated: "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking." In other words, no matter how carefully crafted the keywords you stuff into that tag, they have zero bearing on the ranking algorithm — regardless of whether they match the page's actual content. Bing made a similar public statement around 2011, confirming that both major search engines exclude this tag from their ranking signals.
2. Why: a history of abuse as a spam vector
The keywords tag wasn't excluded because it was simply "meaningless" — it was excluded because it was "abusable." Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when search engines did factor keywords tag content into ranking, "keyword stuffing" spam — cramming the tag with popular search terms unrelated to the page's actual content — spread widely. Because this field was invisible to users, it was hard to verify, and it became a major contributor to declining search result quality. Google's response was to remove this kind of manipulable, invisible signal from the algorithm altogether.
3. Why people still fill it in anyway
Just because Google and Bing ignore it doesn't mean the keywords tag is completely dead code. Some smaller or regional search engines, internal site search, and older CMS plugins still reference this field. There's also plain habit — marketing teams and clients keep filling it in because "it's on the SEO checklist." In fact, the meta tag generator still generates the <meta name="keywords"> tag whenever a keywords value is supplied — in code, it follows a pattern like if(keywords) lines.push(...), so it's simply omitted when the field is empty and only output when it's filled in. It's kept as an optional feature, not a requirement.
4. So which meta elements actually affect ranking?
| Meta element | Direct ranking effect | Actual role |
|---|---|---|
| title tag | Yes | Core signal for judging query relevance |
| description meta | No (indirect) | Search-result snippet text; affects click-through rate (CTR) |
| keywords meta | No | Fully ignored by Google since 2009; excluded due to its spam history |
| Body content | Yes | Core basis for judging actual relevance and quality |
In other words, the time you'd spend on the keywords tag is far better invested in optimizing the title tag and body content quality. Check the elements that actually matter with the SEO title generator and the meta description generator.
5. When it's still worth filling in the keywords tag
- When an in-house or organizational search engine (Elasticsearch, internal site search, etc.) actually uses this field for indexing.
- When a legacy CMS or a specific regional search engine still references it.
- When you want to keep a tag/category taxonomy in the metadata for content-management purposes rather than SEO purposes (i.e., purely internal organization).
Outside these specific cases, time spent writing the keywords tag is essentially wasted — you're better off checking which meta tags on your page are actually meaningful with the meta tag analyzer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Does adding a keywords tag hurt my ranking?
A. No. It's completely ignored in ranking calculations, so it's neither a plus nor a minus. That said, some believe spammy keyword stuffing could indirectly combine with other spam signals against you, so filling it in for no real reason still isn't recommended.
Q. Then why does the meta tag generator still have a keywords field?
A. Some small search engines, internal site search, and legacy systems may still reference it, so it's kept as an optional field for users who want it. Leave it blank and the tag simply isn't generated — it's not required.
Q. Does the description meta tag directly affect ranking too?
A. No. Description also isn't factored directly into the ranking algorithm. But since it's used as the snippet text shown in search results, it affects click-through rate (CTR), which affects traffic over the long run.
Q. Did the keywords tag actually affect rankings before 2009?
A. In the early days of search engines (late 1990s to early 2000s), some engines did reference it. But as keyword-stuffing spam spread, it came to be seen as an unreliable signal, and major search engines phased it out one by one.