I think still google likes Meta Tags. Still google of some countries is using meta information from sites to rank. So adding Meta description and meta keywords are required or not. Do they have still any affect on rankings....
Without the description tag you'll probably wind up with more supplemental results and wouldn't rank at all.
The tags still count. The title and description tag actually count quite a bit. The keywords tag is what counts little, but it's an awesome place to stick keyword misspellings.
i agree that google likes them, but doesnt hold them as high a priority, i see search engines as common sense, they analyze your site see how easy it is to navigate it, they then check other sites see if they are relevant to you, then they look at the keywords linked from there site and the title tag and description on there site and adjust your ranking, content is king, title tags, your url and the age of the link, and the other stuff above is all i see as good, dont worry about the 100 or so factors. these are my meta tags: <meta name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW"> <meta name="Author" content="DIY Conservatories"> <meta name="title" lang="en" content="DIY Conservatories" /> <meta name="description" content="DIY Conservatories: Top Quality Diy conservatory with Rehau Windows, Save Thousands with Diy Conservatories PShaped TShaped Victorian Conservatory." /> <meta name="keywords" content="DIY Conservatories,Conservatory,Conservatories,Window,Windows, High Quality,DIY Conservatories And Windows,UK Conservatories,Victorian,Pshaped,Tshaped,Edwardian,Sun Lounge, Permission,Planning,Builders" /> <meta name="DC.subject.keyword" lang="en" content="DIY Conservatories,Conservatory,Conservatories,Window,Windows, High Quality,DIY Conservatories And Windows,UK Conservatories,Victorian,Pshaped,Tshaped,Edwardian,Sun Lounge, Permission,Planning,Builders" /> <meta name="DC.publisher" lang="en" content="Digital View Multimedia Studio" /> <meta name="DC.creator" lang="en" content="Diy Conservatories" /> <meta name="eGMS.subject.category" scheme="GCL" lang="en" content="Conservatories" /> <meta name="DC.audience" scheme="e-GMSAES" lang="en" content="Businesses" /> <meta name="DC.language" scheme="ISO 639-2/T" lang="en" content="eng" /> <meta name="DC.Subject" scheme="BL.GOV VOCAB" lang="en" content="Diy Conservatories" /> <meta name="DC.rights.copyright" lang="en" content="DIY Conservatories" /> <meta name="DC.description" scheme="W3CDTF" lang="en" content="DIY Conservatories: Top Quality Diy conservatory with Rehau Windows, Save Thousands with Diy Conservatories PShaped TShaped Vicotrian Conservatory." />
oh by the way if you search for diy conservatories on google im number 10 at the moment, with only one google backlink i must be doing something right with the content
Google gives only a little attention on meta tags for some reason. but it still helps. after all, its one of the on-page factors of SEO.
Have a read on this http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
InBound Link - a link pointing TO YOUR SITE Here is a list of SEO Acronyms - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=256787
BL = Backlink CSE = Comparison Shopping Engine or Custom Search Engine (Google) CSS = Cascading Style Sheet DC = Data Center DMOZ = Directory - Mozilla HTML = HyperText Markup Language IBL = Inbound Link IPB9 = Internet Business Promoter IR = Indexing and Retrieval LSA = Latent semantic analysis LSI = Latent Semantic Indexing OBL = Outbound Link ODP = Open Direcrory Project, See DMOZ OWBL = One way back link PaIR = Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval PR = PageRank RI = Regular index RSS = RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication SE = Search Engine SEM = Search Engine Marketing SEO = Search Engine Optimization (Optimisation) SERP = Search Engine Results Page SI = Supplemental Index SSE = Yahoo! Search Submit Express SSP = Yahoo! Search Submit Pro SWL = SiteWide Link TBPR = Toolbar PageRank TR = Trust Rank VIPS = Visual-block Page Segmentation WP/WP4 = Web Position/Web Position 4 XML = Extensible Markup Language Thanks for this Info
On rankings, no. The keywords tag is ignored. The description tag helps because in some searches it will show up as the snippet or description below your listing. There is no evidence that the description tag has any effect on Googe rankings, however. Not true. The title tag, yes. The description tag? See my comments above.
How do you know if your results are supplemental? And as far as that goes, what is 'supplemental results' actuallY? This has always confused me.
A good meta description can increase the chance that a searcher will click on your site in the SERPs.
Personally I think description is essential and keywords is useless. Google is very good at parsing webpages for keywords but really wants a coherent chunk of text premade by you for the search listings.