The keywords metatag was invented as part of the HTML language in the early 90′s. The abuse began almost immediately with webmasters “stuffing” it full of non related keywords in an attempt to drive traffic to their sites. Many websites put popular terms like “britney spears” etc into their keyword meta tag in effect misdirecting searchers.

The importance of keywords in search engine optimisation has therefore naturally diminished; however it was unconfirmed exactly just how little emphasis the search engines now place on meta keywords. Recently Google guru Matt Cutts was asked whether Google uses the keywords metatag at all anymore. Check out his answer in this short video.