Keyword limit in meta tags?

[rob]

Is there a limit to the number of keywords you can put in your meta tags before:

A. Google and others ignore them

B. Google and others penalise you

[David]

It is generally considered that fewer is better and around 10 might be optimal BUT...

Don't waste your time on this as none of the major search engines (Google included) will take the slightest interest in meta keywords. They are considered to be an unreliable indicator of page content.

[Tom]

Danny says http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931"Inktomi says that you should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas. More advice from Inktomi can be found on its Content Policy FAQ." Inktomi now belongs to Yahoo and "you should include up to 25 words or phrases". Yahoo bought Inktomi in 2004 and I am unsure what they do with it!

[David]

"you should include up to 25 words or phrases".

By all means do so but it won't make any difference to your findability.

"In the mid to late 1990s the keyword meta tag was highly abused... Search engines started to address this problem in 1998 by looking at the actual page content... Today, all of the major search engines have followed suit, making the keyword's meta tag obsolete. You can safely omit it from your pages without worry of missing out on ranking benefits."

From: Building Findable Websites (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Findable-Websites-Standards-Beyond/dp/0321526287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204623364&sr=8-1) by Aarron Walter (Pub. Feb 2008)

[David]

Do bear in mind that although the keyword meta tag is now obsolete, the description meta tag is VERY important, so make sure you include one and make sure the text is descriptive of the page content and accurate. Descriptions should be 150 to 200 characters in length. The maximum is 1024 but search engine listings will truncate them. Google seems to truncate after 25 word or thereabouts.