Which search engines still use meta tag information..
.. and which do not?
MSN has been shown to utilize both the keyword and description tags as part of their relevancy score to determine SERPs position.
Yahoo doesn’t use the keyword tags in their relevancy score as far as we can tell lately, but will use the description tag.
Google uses neither keyword or description tags in their relevancy score, and we believe, although this is a definite gray area, that Google disregards both of them in determining overall PageRank.
In the face of the changing search engine optimisation (SEO) industry, those SEOs that rely heavily on their meta keyword and descriptions tags are going to find that more and more they will be fairly disappointed in the effectiveness of optimised keyword and description tags.
In the not too distant future companies have to become aware that “content is king” is becoming more and more true everyday. You can still use MSN to catch your meta descriptions, but do not rely heavily on this for the other search engines.
This is the way that the search engine companies are moving, with this knowledge, at Callender Creates we apply this to our web sites and give you a genuine and ethical position in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
We do not over-optimise our pages, nor do we use black magic to get high listings as this usually means getting penalised by the search engines.
