Google Penguin w/ Meta Keywords

[BeTheBoss]

It's getting really hard filtering through the Penguin articles flying around right now so excuse me if this has been addressed:

I know that Google no longer uses the meta keywords as indicators (VERY old news). But I'm just wondering if they are starting to look at them as a bigger spam indicator since Penguin is looking at over-optimization.

If yes, has anyone read good article indicating so?

The reason I ask is because I have two websites, one is authoritative and the other… not so much. Recently my authoritative website has taken a dip in rankings, a significant dip. The non-authoritative one has increased in rankings… by a lot.

Now, the authoritative website pages that use meta-keywords seem to be the ones that are having issues… so it really has me wondering. Both websites compete with each other and are fairly similar in their offerings.

I should also mention that the meta-keywords were implemented a long time ago… before I took over the account.

Also important to note, I never purchase links and never practice any spammy techniques. I am as white hat as it gets which has me really puzzled as to why one site dropped drastically.

[irvingw]

While I haven't seen any Penguin update that mentioned the meta keywords specifically, there was a lot of talk of over optimization and the meta keywords can certainly fall in that arena. Old webmasters would stuff the meta keywords with tons of similar words. The meta keywords has no upside at all and can potentially be a red flag to both Bing and Google if keywords in this meta tag are not consistent with page content.

All said, I would look for other reasons why the site may of been consumed by the penguin. But if your meta keywords are excessive and repetitious I would definitely remove them.

[EGOL]

Can anyone suggest one reason why google would consider meta keywords a sin?

If nobody has good reasons then I doubt that google would penalize for them.

[BeTheBoss]

It is pretty much covered in this article by Danny Sullivan.

Excerpt: So use the tag? Sure, if you want to take a chance that by overstuffing it, you’ll cause Bing to think you’re spamming. Be safe, be smart, save your time. Don’t use it.

[EGOL]

Thanks for the link.

I have them on lots of pages and am not worried about them... but they are not "overstuffed".