The author meta tag was deprecated by Google in 2009 and has been ignored for ranking purposes ever since — but it still appears in meta tag generators, is still included in most "complete meta tag" tutorials, and is still added to millions of pages by developers who don't know it does nothing
The previous articles on this site covered meta tag basics, why Google rewrites title tags, meta description best practices, robots/noindex contradictions, and Open Graph vs Twitter Cards. This article addresses which meta tags actually matter — the specific ones that affect search behavior, social sharing, or browser rendering, and which are historical artifacts that generate output without any practical effect.
The meta tags that actively affect search behavior
These meta tags have confirmed, documented effects on how search engines process and display pages:
<meta name="robots">: the most impactful. Controls indexing (noindex), link following (nofollow), snippet display (nosnippet, max-snippet), and image display in results. Not all directives are supported by all search engines.
<meta name="googlebot">: Google-specific variant of the robots tag. Allows Google-specific directives while leaving other crawlers unaffected. Useful when you want different behavior for Google vs other crawlers.
<title> (technically not a meta tag but a head element): the primary on-page signal for what a page is about. Used in search result listings (though Google may rewrite it). Distinct from meta tags but often generated alongside them.
<meta name="description">: used as the search snippet (the descriptive text under the title in search results) when Google determines it's more representative than a page excerpt. Does not affect ranking directly; affects click-through rate. Google rewrites it roughly 60-70% of the time.
The meta tags that affect social sharing (but not search ranking)
Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, og:url): used by Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, and most social platforms to generate link previews. No effect on search ranking.
Twitter Card tags (twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image): used by X/Twitter. Falls back to Open Graph if Twitter-specific tags are absent. No effect on search ranking.
These tags are important for social traffic but are often mislabeled as "SEO meta tags" — they're social meta tags that affect social platform presentation, not search.
The deprecated meta tags that do nothing
<meta name="author">: once used by some early search engines to understand who wrote a page. Deprecated by Google around 2009. Has no documented effect on any major search engine. Still generated by many meta tag tools and templates.
<meta name="keywords">: the original meta tag for specifying page keywords. Google deprecated it in 2009 (explicitly announcing it was not used for ranking); it was being heavily spammed with irrelevant terms. Bing has similarly stated it doesn't use it for ranking, though it may use its absence as a spam signal. No current major search engine uses this tag for ranking.
<meta name="revisit-after">: attempted to tell crawlers when to return for re-indexation. Never adopted as a standard; ignored by all major search engines. Still appears in some generators.
<meta name="rating">: attempted to indicate content rating (adult content, etc.). The voluntary rating system it was associated with (ICRA) shut down; the tag is widely ignored.
<meta name="copyright">: provides copyright notice. No search engine effect; legal protection for copyright doesn't depend on this tag.
The meta tags that affect browser behavior
<meta charset="UTF-8">: specifies character encoding. Critical for correct text rendering — without it, browsers must guess encoding from content. Should be the first element in <head>, before any content that could be misinterpreted.
<meta name="viewport">: controls how mobile browsers scale and display the page. content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" is the standard responsive design declaration. Affects mobile rendering and is a factor in mobile-friendly ranking signals — though the mechanism is through page usability, not the tag itself.
<meta http-equiv="refresh">: triggers automatic page redirect/refresh. Strongly discouraged for redirect purposes (use proper 301 redirects); the one legitimate use is automatic refresh of live data pages.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy">: defines a Content Security Policy that restricts what resources the page can load. Provides XSS protection. Can also be set as an HTTP header (which is generally preferred, as it reaches the browser before the HTML is parsed).
The theme-color and app-capable meta tags
<meta name="theme-color">: used by Chrome and some other browsers to set the browser toolbar/UI color on mobile. Takes a CSS color value. No SEO effect but affects the polished mobile experience.
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable">: tells iOS Safari to run the page as a full-screen web app when saved to the home screen (hides the browser chrome). No SEO effect; Progressive Web App territory.
<meta name="msapplication-TileColor">: Microsoft-specific tag for Windows tile color when pinned to the Windows Start menu. Increasingly legacy as Windows tile behavior has changed.
How to use the Meta Tag Generator on sadiqbd.com
- Focus on the four that matter for search:
<title>,<meta name="description">,<meta name="robots">, and<meta name="viewport">— these are the ones with documented search and rendering effects - Add Open Graph and Twitter Card tags separately for social sharing — these control how your link looks when shared on social platforms, independent of search
- Skip deprecated tags: if the generator offers
<meta name="keywords">or<meta name="author">, omit them — they add bytes to every page without providing any benefit
Frequently Asked Questions
Does including <meta name="keywords"> hurt my SEO?
Probably not, but it's wasted code. Google has confirmed it doesn't use keyword meta tags for ranking, and they're not a negative ranking signal unless they contain spam keywords unrelated to the page. However, some SEO practitioners note that Bing's quality signals may interpret heavily keyword-stuffed meta keywords tags as a spam indicator — meaning a very long, keyword-stuffed keywords tag is a very minor risk. The practical advice: don't include it in new builds; if it's already on existing pages, deprioritize removing it below more impactful optimizations.
Is the Meta Tag Generator free? Yes — completely free, no sign-up required.
Try the Meta Tag Generator free at sadiqbd.com — generate all the meta tags your page actually needs in one place.
