Google and Keywords

Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. January 2008 - 0:00

I thought that Google doesn't use the keywords, so why have them?

Actually, in the mid-90s, the first search engines like Yahoo and Alta-Vista were using keywords to rank webpages. People decided to “stuff” keywords in their web pages. So they would put a name like Kodak, Kodak, Kodak, dozens and hundreds of time even if the pages were not about Kodak.

So all the search engines, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo decided by the late 90s to ignore the keywords for their rankings since people abused them so much.

Around 2005/2006, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo started to use keywords again. They use them but not for searching purposes. They are being used for display purposes. If you do not use keywords you will get “penalty” points.

Matt Cutts, The head of Google's quality control team aka web spam mentioned that Google does not use keywords in the search in Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search article. Yes, literally, Google does not use the keyword in the search, but it uses them in the ranking within the search provided:

The keywords:

  • Must be words used in the body and/or title of the web page.
  • Must not be repeated in the keywords, aka keyword stuffing.
  • If used in the description of the web page, they will be highlighted in the description.
  • If typed by the user in the Google's search box and is used as a keyword and is in the description, your rating will be significantly improved.
  • If the keyword is used by other websites to link to your web page, your ranking will improve.