The keywords meta tag: far from dead

[minstrel]

Even those who argue vigorously that you're wasting your time with meta tags occasionally begrudgingly concede that a few of the less important ones might pay some attention to them.

Here's why you should pay attention to them, and not just for the minor search engines:

MSN guidelines on meta tags:

Meta tags are very important for improving your listings in the search engines. Check your site and build them if you need to.

Keywords:
Enter up to 10 keywords that you think people might use to search for your site; separate each keyword by a comma. Keywords may be a single word or two-word phrases.

Other search engines using the keywords meta tag include AltaVista, Infoseek/Go, Inktomi, and the new Yahoo.

Yahoo guidelines, posted by magpie).

META Keywords:
* Contains less than 15 keyword phrases each separated by commas.
* Uses important keywords and phrases unique to the individual page.
* Combines important online action words with your product/service keywords such as, "buy", "shop", "find" and/or "purchase".
* Minimal repetition of individual words.
* Consistent with Title tag and web page Body content.

[Mel]

I know its a shock Minstrel, but I have to agree with you on those two engines.;-)

How much weight they put on the meta keywords tag is open to question, but both of these engines have spidered and indexed the unique word I put in the keywords tag for my Google test.