google and meta tags

i've heard alot of people say that google ignores meta tags because they are so easy to spam, and will sometimes even penalize sites based on them. a few questions to people who definitely know the answer:

1. is it true that google ignores the keywords and description?
2. is it worth having them for yahoo and msn?
3. has there been any experiments of meta tag effects, and where can i find it?

thanks all ;-)

I use meta tags, because some SE's probably still look at them. The key is to not be spammy with them.

I agree, non spammy metas tags are worthwhile and are important for several SEs

How many times do you think that one can repeat a keyword in the Meta Tags without getting penalised for being spammy?

I can't get the idea out of my head that spammy keywords metas won't help your Google ranking, but CAN trigger a (small) penalty.

Speculation of course. I hope someone who's studied this will comment

To be safe (and whenever I can find the time) I'm going to set up my metas in the modern "single stream" style: every (major) keyword only mentioned once... I don't believe in keyphrases in metas anymore... They're so 2003 ;)

I have seen sites with excellent PR and their Meta fields are quite robust and i've seen others omit them. I would put them in there for old time search engine sake, but i have tested it for google..and they really don't do much. It's all about the algorithm..(placement, url, frequency, and importance)

mike

Today, I saw that the description for my listing included my meta tag as well as a random line from the page. Have never seen this before. Maybe Google does use the meta tag in some ways. I always thought they did not but have included for other search engines.

Jackal - Google only uses the Description meta for display on the results pages (if they can't find enough relevant text on the actual page to put in the "snippet"). But Google does not use the Descr. meta to influence your ranking... Not anymore anyway.

One of the main things I noticed that changed from the Florida update is that onpage stuff like density, bold, picture alt... became basically useless. 1% or 10% density changes nothing in serps.

Tags, except <title>, do nothing in serps either, except if you have a super good description there... you may get more clicks because humans linked it compared to the sites above you.

As a newbie, I spent hours fixing up my keyword tags. Now, as soon as I touch a page that has one of those piece of art keywords tag I made, I strip it to a handfull of words... most SE don't even bother to use them because they were spammed up to yin-yan before.

Some sites will omit the keywords and descriptions tags because most SE will just use the content instead.

Do meta because MSN and Yahoo still weigh them enough too make a difference between Top 20 and not.

Google does not index the contents of the meta tag KEYWORDS.

Google does not use the contents of meta tag KEYWORDS to positively rank the web page.

Google could use the contents of meta tag KEYWORDS to increase the accuracy of their anti-spam algorithms.

Google does not index the meta tag DESCRIPTION.

Google does use the contents of the meta tag DESCRIPTION to build the "snippet" of the page.

Google probably does not use the contents of meta tag DESCRIPTION to positively rank the web page.

Google could use the contents of meta tag DESCRIPTION to increase the accuracy of their anti-spam algorithms.




Yes, but just a bit and only if you don't spam them.


A note about the anti-spam algorithms: the contents of the meta tag KEYWORDS are very very useful to understand what keywords the webmaster wants the page to rank for.

In the past, I have programmed some algorithms that used the contents of that meta tag to increase the accuracy of a keyword stuffing detection system. So, basicly, the webmaster him/herself tells me what keywords I should analyze more. ;)