Does Google use the keywords meta tag for web ranking?

Definition: The keywords meta tag is an HTML element that lists keywords relevant to a page in its content attribute. As of 17 October 2026, Google Search ignores this tag for both indexing and web ranking.

Key facts

• Google's statement published on 21 September 2009 explicitly excludes the keywords meta tag from its web search ranking.
• Google's meta tags documentation lists meta name="keywords" among unsupported tags and states that it has no effect on indexing or ranking.
• The HTML Standard defines the tag's value as comma-separated keywords relevant to the page.

What does Google's statement cover?

Google's original announcement addresses ranking in its public web search. The post distinguishes that service from the Google Search Appliance, an enterprise search product described in the announcement as capable of matching meta tags. That historical product example explains the scope of the answer.

The post attributes Google's decision to abuse: site owners could place irrelevant keywords in metadata without ordinary visitors seeing them. Its example concerns a competitor copying keywords and adding another company's name to the tag; Google says this has no effect on its web search ranking.

What does the tag look like?

The HTML Standard's example places this element inside the page's <head>:

<meta name="keywords" content="british,type face,font,fonts,highway,highways">

The example describes a page about typefaces on British motorways. The name attribute identifies the metadata as keywords, while content supplies the list. The standard's processing rules split that value on commas and remove duplicates.

The same standard discusses a possible use within a content management system: keywords from its own pages can populate a site-specific search index. It also cautions against using the information when confidence in its reliability is insufficient.

Which other meta tags does Google support?

Google's supported tags reference documents separate purposes for other metadata. A description tag supplies a short page description that Google sometimes uses in a search result snippet, the descriptive text shown with a result. The robots and googlebot tags control crawling and indexing behavior; googlebot specifically addresses Google.

For checking page metadata, the same reference points to the URL Inspection Tool. It also explains that a content management system may expose search engine settings instead of direct HTML editing.

Related terms

• Meta robots
• Does Google require a fixed meta description length?
• HTML heading structure

FAQ

Does a competitor copying my meta keywords affect Google's ranking?

Google's announcement addresses this exact scenario. It says keywords in that tag have no effect on its web search ranking.

Should I remove every meta tag from my site?

Google's documentation supports several tags, including description and google-site-verification. You can use the latter on your site's top-level page to verify ownership for Search Console.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking", 21 September 2009
2. Google Search Central, "Meta tags and attributes that Google supports", updated 10 December 2025
3. WHATWG, "HTML Standard: keywords", living standard

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