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Refine the answer for “What does <meta name="keywords"> do, and is it still relevant?”. Your changes go to moderation before they’re published.

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The `<meta name="keywords">` tag used to be used to specify **keywords** describing the page's content, so search engines would understand which queries to show it for.

However, **in today's SEO reality this tag no longer matters** for ranking and is used only for rare auxiliary purposes.

---

### 1. What the tag looks like

```html
<meta name="keywords" content="clothing, sneakers, sports footwear, Nike, Adidas">
```

Here:

- `name="keywords"`: the meta tag type, denotes keywords,
- `content`: the listed words or phrases, comma-separated.

---

### 2. What it used to do

Early search engines (in the 1990s and early 2000s) used `keywords` to understand a page's topic.
For example:

```html
<meta name="keywords" content="buy iphone, smartphone store, Apple">
```

→ the bot considered the page relevant to queries like "buy iphone", "smartphone store", and so on.

But over time, webmasters started **abusing the tag**, inserting dozens of irrelevant words (so-called *keyword stuffing*).

---

### 3. Why it **became irrelevant**

- **Google** officially stated back in **2009** that the `keywords` tag **is not used** for ranking.
- **Bing** and other search engines also stopped taking its content into account, to avoid manipulation.
- Algorithms now analyze the **actual content of the page**, not a list of words.

Source:

> Google Search Central: *"We don't use the keywords meta tag in our web ranking."*

---

### 4. When `keywords` may still be useful

- For **internal site search** (for example, a CMS or corporate catalog may use the tag).
- For **organizational purposes** within a company, as a tag for a document's topic or category.
- For **legacy systems**, where SEO engines still rely on it (extremely rare).

---

### 5. If you decide to use it anyway

It will not hurt, but it will not help either. You can write it concisely:

```html
<meta name="keywords" content="psychology, relationships, self-esteem, growth">
```

The main thing is not to "stuff keywords" or insert dozens of key phrases.

---

### Summary:

| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Lists the page's keywords |
| Example | `<meta name="keywords" content="footwear, sports, sneakers">` |
| Used by search engines | No (neither Google nor Bing) |
| May be useful | For internal search or analytics |
| Recommendation | Not required, gives no SEO benefit |

---

**In simple terms:**
`<meta name="keywords">` is an **outdated SEO tag**.
It used to help with ranking,
but now search engines **ignore** it, relying instead on **actual text, structure, and user behavior**.

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