Google has discontinued its support for news meta keywords tag. They introduced the new meta keywords tag particularly for news publishers in 2012 and discontinued supporting it a few months ago. Since Google didn’t announce about this change, publishers have continued using it. Usage of news meta keywords tag won’t help Google to understand the content of your news. This is because Google ignores it in the same way they ignore normal meta keywords tag. Though keeping them on pages is fine, Google doesn’t use it for Google News as it used to.
Months after Google made the announcement, only a handful of publishers have utilized it. Taking into consideration the fact that Google hasn’t supported the tag for months and the change is visible now, it is an indication about how many website owners use the tag in their contents. Therefore, people who are into publishing and use news meta keywords tag for their content can stop using it from now on. In case you have used the tag, you don’t have to worry. You only have to make sure that you don’t use it in your future articles.
