I have heard than the bigger search engines aren't paying much, if any attention to META keywords and descriptions. Is this true? Are they necessary?
for the "little bit of extra effort," why wouldn't you add them - just in case. p.s. i don't know whether it's true or not.
The "keywords" and "description" meta tags have been greatly depreciated for most search engines, but Yahoo! still considers them to play an important role. And considering they take less then two minutes to implement into a page I would recommend you include them, personally.
As someone said, since descriptions do often appear in the search engine listings, Who better than you to write them. Keywords are so easy to do why not add them as well. If I had to choose only one I would definately go with the description. Shannon
I asked the same question a few weeks ago. I decided to add them after all it may help in the small searchengines.
MSN uses meta description and It's on their site . I have seen yahoo results display text from description tag . So no harm using them ... Regards Jeet
I always add a description, but for keywords, I'll just stick some in if I have spare time and am bored...
Google seems to be not giving much attention to keywords. My site is about Computers, but some of my site visitors that came from GoogleSeach use the keyword Online movies, crumb-producing foods, Which is on the content. I think Google now prefers content rather than keywords.
What "big search engine companies" are you talking about? I'm pretty sure msn, yahoo and google uses the meta part. But as it could hurt just to put it in anyway.
meta description is much important and Try to put your most important keyword on title tag. Here's my proof. type the keyword "free pc tips" and " online income opportunities" on MSN.
Yahoo actually adds weigth to meta descriptions. I ran a little test and ranked on yahoo for keywords that appeared only in my meta description.
While other engines may ignore your meta keywords and description, it's possible to rank for kw's only found in your meta description or keywords on Yahoo.