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Google drops support for meta news keywords tag

After years of telling publishers to use the news meta keyword tag, Google said it stopped supporting it months ago.

Barry Schwartz on February 20, 2018 at 7:08 am

Google has dropped its support for the news meta keywords tag. Google introduced the new meta keywords tag specifically for news publishers back in 2012 and quietly stopped supporting it months ago.

Google did not announce this change, so publishers, like us at Search Engine Land, have continued to use it. Using the news meta keywords tag will not help Google understand your news content anymore since Google ignores it the same way they ignore the normal meta keywords tag.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller confirmed this, saying, “It looks like we dropped support for this around the time when we removed it from the help center.” He added, “Keeping it on pages is fine, we just don’t use it for Google News anymore.”

Hi Joost, it looks like we dropped support for this around the time when we removed it from the help center. Keeping it on pages is fine, we just don't use it for Google News anymore.
— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) February 20, 2018

Months after Google announced it, only 5 percent of publishers actually used it.

If you are a publisher, and you use it for your news content, you can safely stop using it going forward. This will be my first story here in years where I do not use the news meta keyword tag.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.