The power of urban myth is not something to be toyed with.

In a recent meeting a debate arose after I said that Google doesn’t use the keyword metatag. I was challenged on this point by someone confidently asserting that Google is indeed using the keyword metatag once again. He inferred that any suggestion that they weren’t was simply uninformed.

We agreed to disagree. The customer was confused. My creditability was compromised.

I blogged about the keyword metatag back in 2008. More recently even Google’s Matt Cutts once again debunked this urban myth, but the mighty keyword metatags’ magic powers will continue to persist…

My point is that there is so much SEO mis-information that the sheer mass generates its own pseudo-creditability much along the lines of …Oh yeah that must be true because I heard it the other day….

Metatag Basics
A metatag is a special place inside the web page HTML code that can store variables for example the Description meta tag which is used in SERPs

The keyword meta tag is one of a number of common HTML metatags, traditionally used to store a string of words that represent the content on that page.

Its use has persisted, particularly in Content Management Systems where editors are invited to add ‘search words’ etc that are then published into the keyword metatag by the CMS.

The keyword metatag was identified as being open to abuse around 2002, and no longer used by Google from that time and I suspect by many other search engines for the same reason.