Meta keywords
The meta keywords tag lists a page's keywords in its HTML. Google has ignored it for ranking since at least 2009.
The meta keywords tag is a line of HTML that lists the keywords a page is about. In the early days of search, search engines read it to help decide what a page should rank for. It looks like this:
<meta name="keywords" content="coffee, coffee beans, espresso, Leeds">Today it does next to nothing. Google said in 2009 that it doesn't use the keywords meta tag in its web rankings, and it doesn't appear in Google's list of supported meta tags.
Why it stopped working
The tag asked site owners to describe their own pages, and many lied. Pages stuffed it with every popular search term, related or not, so search engines learned to judge a page by what it actually says and by what other sites say about it.
For example, a site in 2003 selling cheap watches might have listed "coffee, holidays, football, celebrity news" in its keywords tag to catch traffic. Search engines that trusted the tag ended up sending people to the wrong pages.
Should you remove it?
There's no need to rush. A keywords tag doesn't hurt you in Google. But it can tell your competitors exactly which terms you're targeting, and it's one more thing to keep up to date. Most sites simply leave it empty or take it out.
Some smaller search engines and site search tools may still read it, so check yours if you rely on one.
Meta keywords and AI search
AI platforms read what a page says, the same as search engines learned to. There's no sign that any of them use the keywords tag, and none of their published guidance mentions it. The words that matter are the ones in your headings and your text, written for the questions people ask.
In AnswerOrbit, The prompt in a heading is one of the eight page checks: it looks for whether a page's headings match the question it should answer.