Does Bing Use Meta Keywords?
Short answer: not in any useful way. Bing acknowledged the meta keywords tag for years after Google dropped it. Then spammers found it. That was the end.
We hear this question fairly often at To-The-TOP!, usually from business owners who inherited a site with a keyword field stuffed by a previous developer. Worth understanding what actually happened before deciding what to do with yours.
What the Meta Keywords Tag Is
Still sitting in the HTML of a lot of older sites. The meta keywords tag lives in a page’s head section, invisible to visitors but readable by crawlers. Original purpose: tell search engines which terms the page was about.
These tags carry a comma-separated list of keywords in the content attribute. Search engines read the list. They were supposed to use it to understand page topic. That relied on site owners being accurate about what their pages covered. Many were not.
Google’s Position: Official Since 2009
No ambiguity on the Google side. In September 2009, Matt Cutts confirmed Google had stopped using the meta keywords tag for ranking. Not reduced weight. Zero weight.
Keyword stuffing inside the field had been standard practice for years. Sites also loaded hundreds of irrelevant terms to chase rankings for topics their pages had nothing to do with. Google had already stopped reading the tag before the announcement. The 2009 statement formalized what was already the case.
Bing’s Position: A Different Story
Bing took a longer path. For several years after Google’s statement, Bing’s official position was that the meta keywords tag carried some limited relevance. Not the same weight as title tags or page content. Still something.
That changed in 2014. Duane Forrester, Bing’s senior product manager for webmaster outreach, posted directly on the Bing Webmaster blog. His conclusion: abusing meta keywords had become so widespread that Bing now treats a heavily populated field as a potential spam signal. Not a helpful signal. A red flag.
Forrester still stopped short of declaring the tag fully dead the way Google had. Bing’s phrasing was cautious. Still, the practical outcome is the same for any legitimate site: filling in meta keywords today gains nothing. It risks looking like a site trying to game search results.
Why Spammers Finished It Off
Context matters here. The meta keywords tag was always easy to exploit.
Filling it in required no effort. Content did not have to match the terms listed. Anyone could load hundreds of unrelated search terms and hope to catch spillover traffic. Search engines that trusted the field were handing a manipulation lever to anyone willing to use it.
Both Google and Bing arrived at the same conclusion. A signal that cannot be trusted at scale is worse than no signal. Bing may still technically read it. The bar for triggering a spam interpretation, though, is low. Only spammers still populate it heavily. That association alone is reason to leave yours blank.
Meta Tags That Still Matter for Bing SEO
Some tags still carry real ranking weight. The keywords field is not among them.
Title tags are. Bing treats the title tag as a direct ranking signal, the same way Google does. A title tag aligned with actual search intent outweighs anything in the meta keywords field.
Meta descriptions do not affect rankings on Bing directly. They still show up in search results, though. A description that matches what someone is actually searching for generates more clicks. Those clicks feed back as usage signals.
Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags also have practical value on Bing. Microsoft has confirmed social signals factor into the algorithm more explicitly than Google has. Those meta tags carry more practical weight here than they do on Google.
What Actually Moves Rankings on Bing
Title tags and visible page content are the foundation. Bing reads the text on your pages directly. That is the signal that replaced the meta keywords tag after its credibility collapsed. Content that genuinely covers what someone is searching for ranks. Stuffed with irrelevant terms, the page does not.
Backlinks still carry significant weight on Bing, arguably more than on Google at the moment. A strong backlink profile from relevant, authoritative domains still moves rankings in ways no meta tag can substitute for.
Page speed matters. Mobile responsiveness matters. Slow pages with poor mobile layouts lose high-intent visitors to faster sites.
Solid keyword analysis for SEO anchors all of it. Understanding what your customers actually search for is where Bing SEO starts. It is also where our Calgary SEO work starts. The keyword research work To-The-TOP! runs for clients covers both Google and Bing.
Should You Remove Meta Keywords from Your Pages?
Practical question, short answer. New pages: leave the field empty.
On existing pages with the field already populated, removal is not urgent. If you are already inside your site as part of our website audit, clear it out while you are there. Noise at best. A spam flag at worst.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which search engines use meta keywords?
None of the major ones treat them as a positive ranking signal. Google dropped the tag in 2009. Bing confirmed it treats a heavily populated field as a spam indicator starting around 2014. Yahoo now runs on Bing’s index. Same logic applies. Meta keywords have been functionally dead across major search engines for over a decade.
Are meta keywords still useful?
Not for rankings. The meta description tag still influences click-through rates in search results. Title tags still affect rankings. The meta keywords tag specifically carries no ranking value on Google or Bing. Time spent on keyword research and on-page content goes further.
Does Bing use the meta keywords tag for ranking?
Not as a positive signal. Duane Forrester’s 2014 post on the Bing Webmaster blog confirmed it: the tag had been abused so heavily by spammers that Bing treats it as a spam indicator rather than a ranking input. Bing never formally declared the tag dead the way Google did. The practical effect, however, is the same.
When did Google stop using meta keywords?
September 2009. Matt Cutts confirmed it publicly. Google had already stopped reading the tag for ranking purposes before the announcement. The statement was a formalization of existing practice, not a policy change. Bing followed a slower path and arrived at the same outcome by 2014.
Good search engine optimization means working the signals that still move rankings. Title tags. On-page content. Backlinks. Genuine keyword research. If you also want to have us manage your Google Ads alongside organic SEO services, To-The-TOP! handles both. Meta keywords have not mattered since 2009 on one engine and 2014 on the other.
