I used to use these and think they were oh-so-important, but I feel less and less about that each day and practically don't use them anymore Should they definitely still be used? Are they still rather significant?
I just posted about meta tags and why you should still use them: http://www.brandon-hopkins.com/how-to-add-unique-meta-tags-in-wordpress
META Keywords won't be used by Google, but other SEs still use them, if you have them, no need to remove them. Description is still very useful, must be unique for each page, long enough, and as said by nabil_kadimi can make the difference in SERPs.
I am sorry, I should have stated that, that is correct google does not seem to care any more though, but the smaller SE's do so still add them in!
Though meta keyword is not used by most major search engines, like google, yahoo and msn, some small SEs still use it. You'd better add one, at least it's better than nothing. Meta description is very important, at least google place heavy weight on it.
Yahoo has stated publicly that Meta keywords do count in their algorithm. It would be foolish not to use them as it does not take that long to add to a page.
I think some search engine still give them importance. Besides meta description can help each page to be unique from each other.
I would still include them don't make too long. Some search engines are known to ignore them, whilst others will just truncate whats there. Keep keywords to 200 characters and description to 250 characters.
But Yahoo, do they say what they use them for? Keywords should be in the title tag, desc. tag and in the content of the page.
they are still of some importance. no it's not 200, actually Google takes into consideration the first 150 chars
Yes, it also helps your site increase SERPs. Descriptions are used to determine the uniqueness of your site's description.