If you search on the internet for information on the use of meta tags in SEO you will come across numerous websites stressing how important it is to get your meta tags right, how many words and characters to use etc. 

But is it really that important?

For Google's web search results, the answer is no.

Here is what Matt Cuts from Google Search Quality Team has to say:

Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword meta tags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.

Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags.  For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets,[...] we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.


So Google does not use meta tags in page ranking, however as a good practice you should still use properly written meta tags as other search engines do use them to position the site in the search results. And well written description can bring you new traffic.