Photo of Meta taken from the Documentary “Meta Keyword, The Dark Years, 2004”
I am surprised how frequently I am asked by clients about the keyword Meta tag. I guess this tag has been useless for so long that I assume that everyone must know by now, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Meta Keyword was born in the 1990’s, and later adopted by his loving parents Infoseek and Altavista in 1995. They had decided that Meta’s unique skills could help them organize the world’s information.
Meta Keyword made friends very quickly and became quite popular with the webmaster and SEO crowd. An astute businessman, he assisted many internet ventures in increasing their online profits by aiding in driving traffic to their sites. As his popularity grew, he started to join the new clubs hosted by Google and Yahoo. Before long his reach had stretched out to nearly all of the search engines the world knew.
But success came too hard and fast for Meta. He turned to steroids and beefed himself up, flexing his muscles on websites all over the world. He grew hungry for more power, getting longer and more stuffed all the time. He started to hang out with the BlackHats, a gang notorious for wreaking havoc on Google and Yahoo, the very clubs Meta Keyword had once been a founding member of.
This all became too much. In 2009 Google officially announced that they had voted him out of their organization. Soon after, other major search engines did the same thing – even the BlackHats sent him packing. Mr. Keyword had nowhere left to go.
Many now say he is dead. Others say he works doing some private contracting for some smaller networks. Just like the Edsel, Dial-up Internet, and Furbies, Meta Keyword may still be a part of some groups lurking in the shadows where most people dare not tread, but this child star has seen his moment in the spotlight come and go, and all at a young age. He will be missed by all, forgotten by most, but still worshiped by a select few.
He is survived by his brothers Meta Description and Title Tag and his adopted (but gravely ill) father, Altavista,. He now joins his cousin Revisit After and his adopted mother, Infoseek in the digital afterlife.
I’ll Be Back!