Yahoo U-Turn On Keywords Meta Tag

Posted Tuesday 20th October 2009 by Craig H in SEO.

At the recent SMX East Expo, Senior Director of Search at Yahoo Cris Pierry stated that the search engine did not use the keywords meta tag. Despite being what many consider to be a highly reliable source, various members of the gathered audience said they didn’t believe him.
article_meta_tags

Tests conducted by prominent SEO specialists have revealed that Yahoo does indeed index the meta tag keyword. In a response to subsequent concerns from Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan, Yahoo stated: “the ranking importance given to meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.”

Keywords Meta Tag

While this sequence of events has undoubtedly been confusing for many who seek clarification on the issue, it now seems that the tag is used, but will only provide a result in Yahoo Search if it is the only instance of a given search term, and does not appear anywhere else on a site. Keyword stuffing will not improve rankings. The meta tag keyword, while consigned to the history books by Google, simply won’t die. Of all the search engines, Google have been the most forthright in their abandonment of the tag, with Matt Cutts stating as much in a September company Youtube video.

Similarly, Bing’s indexing advice gives the impression that the tag is not supported, and yet they have recently blogged about the tag, recommending it is still used.

Title, Meta Description, Body

As all algorithms are constantly updated and changing, there is no reason to think that this situation won’t change again. But as both Yahoo and Bing still use the meta tag keyword, and as these two brands merge over the next two years, it seems more likely that the meta tag keyword is here to stay. The advice then, as always, is to continue using the keywords meta tag, whichever search engine you’re optimising for. Carefully planned implementation of the title and meta descriptions along with well optimised body text and quality back-links remain crucial for good positions on SERPS.

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