Is the Meta Keywords Tag Useless for SEO? (2026 Answer)
How often do you stuff keywords into the meta keywords tag on your pages? Back in September 2009 Google confirmed what many of us suspected: the meta keywords tag plays no part in Google rankings. That is still true in 2026, so here is what the tag is, what each search engine does with it today, and the meta tags you should spend your time on instead.
Quick answer: Yes, for SEO the meta keywords tag is useless. Google does not use it for indexing or ranking, Bing gives it no ranking value and has said a stuffed tag can look like spam, and Yahoo dropped it in 2009. You can safely leave it out. Put your effort into the title tag, the meta description and the page content instead.
Table of Contents
What is the meta keywords tag?
It is an HTML tag in the page head that lists words the page is supposedly about. This is how a typical one looks:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3">
In the late 1990s some search engines read it to understand pages. Because visitors never see it, site owners quickly filled it with every keyword they hoped to rank for, including unrelated popular terms, and search engines stopped trusting it.
Does Google use the meta keywords tag?
No. On 21 September 2009 Matt Cutts, then head of Google’s webspam team, published the post Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking on the official webmaster blog, along with a short video explaining it. Google’s current documentation on meta tags Google understands still says the keywords tag is not used by Google Search and has no effect on indexing or ranking.
Google works out what a page is about from its visible content: the title, headings, body text, images and the links pointing to it. Next time an SEO article tells you to optimize your meta keywords, remember that Googlebot does not even look at them.
What about Bing and Yahoo?
- Bing: Bing has never treated the tag as a ranking signal. In 2011 Bing’s Duane Forrester said Bing looks at it mainly as a possible spam signal: a tag stuffed with dozens of terms is a hint that a page may be low quality.
- Yahoo: Yahoo stopped using the tag in October 2009, a few weeks after Google’s announcement. Yahoo search results have come from Bing for years now.
- Other engines: No major search engine today uses the tag to rank pages.
Should you remove the meta keywords tag?
You don’t have to rush, because a short, honest tag won’t hurt you in Google. But there are good reasons to drop it:
- It shows your strategy to competitors. Anyone can view your page source and copy the keywords you target.
- A stuffed tag can look spammy to Bing, as above.
- It wastes time that is better spent on content and titles.
Most modern SEO plugins no longer output the tag at all. Rank Math, which we use here, doesn’t have a meta keywords field; its “focus keyword” is only an internal guide for its content analysis and never appears in your HTML. See our list of the best WordPress SEO plugins for more.
Meta tags that still matter for SEO in 2026
- Title tag: the clickable headline in search results and still one of the strongest on-page signals. Keep it to about 60 characters with the main keyword near the start.
- Meta description: not a ranking factor, but Google often shows it as the snippet, so a good one earns more clicks. Here is how to add a meta description in WordPress.
- Robots meta tag: controls indexing with values like noindex and nofollow.
- Viewport: tells browsers how to show the page on phones.
- Canonical link: not a meta tag strictly, but it tells search engines which URL is the main version of duplicate pages.
Where keywords really belong
Instead of a hidden keywords list, use the words people actually search for where readers can see them: in the title, the first paragraph, a heading or two, image alt text and naturally through the content. Our guide to keyword research shows how to find those phrases, and the SEO checklist covers the rest of the basics. For free measurement, try these free Google SEO tools.
FAQ
Does the meta keywords tag help SEO in 2026?
No. Google ignores it completely and Bing gives it no ranking value.
Can the meta keywords tag hurt my rankings?
In Google, no. In Bing, a tag stuffed with many terms can be treated as a spam hint, so if you keep one, keep it short and accurate.
Is the meta keywords tag the same as a focus keyword in Yoast or Rank Math?
No. A focus keyword is a setting inside the plugin that helps it check your content. It is not added to the page as a meta keywords tag.
Do any search engines still use meta keywords?
None of the major ones use it for ranking. Some internal site search tools can read it, which is the only practical use left.
Do you still have meta keywords on your site? Tell us in the comments.
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I have read somewhere that out of 10 marks of Onpage SEO, Meta keywords has only 0.2 marks where as Meta Description has 1 mark out of 10. That means Meta keywords has no big mean nowadays in SEO.
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you penning this article plus the rest of the site is also very good.
Good advice with regard to Google, but it sounds to me like the meta tag has some marginal value with other search engines.
Much appreciate the update as I have been working to make my site more google’icious.
Thank you for the information it was very helpful. I’m kinda new to marketing so I’m always eager to learn something new. Meta tags are the past for certain search engines an to the best of my knowledge Google, one of the top 3, happens to be one of them. Thanks again!!
Never liked the keyword meta tag, now I can finally forget about it completely!
Excellent advice – thanks for clearing this up. Wonder how much longer before the other major search engines follow suit.
Good piece of writing, this is very similar to a site that I have. Please check it out sometime and feel free to leave me a comenet on it and tell me what you think. Im always looking for feedback.
Informative post. hope will help my seo adventure.
ya i checked google is not read a keyword from meta tag.. nice details.
This is great. I have been searching for ways to increase my page rank so looks like I don’t need to use these anymore.
Thanks for the update. I had heard for a long time that G didn’t look at keyword meta tag and now it’s official. Good To Know!
There is no replacement for good, quality content, link exchange, and compliant code.
Venkat, WordPress is a different story. It is already very SEO friendly. The keywords that you came across in WordPress blogs could be the tags given to a post. Tags help when there is a tag cloud and this tag cloud is helpful to both users in terms of telling the users what topics run on the blog and the bots also helping them to index topics by deep linking a lot of old archived topics for the bots to reach easily and visit often.
I’ve tried using many keywords in a post and it didn’t help with ranking in Google. Quality of backlinks are more important to rank well especially in Google. so people, build up the backlinks!
I am seeing 100s of meta tag keywords in word press blogs . what happens if there will be no keywords in meta tag at all.
It’s about time this finally became official from Google. There are still idiots out there who teach people about “Meta Keywords” and their effects on Google SERP’s. This hopefully should put an end to that nonsense.
I guess the META keywords tag still work for Yahoo and Bing.
Bing can bring pretty decent traffic, so IMO, using meta tags still help.