Meta keywords spaces and commas or just spaces?

[Chris2289]

Hi I recently read in a SEO help guide that it is best to put only commas between keywords without spaces. Currently i use commas and spaces.

I was just wondering what everyone else uses and whether it makes any difference?

Thanks

[hophigher.com]

I use comas/spaces and never bothered trying anything else. It pretty much the standard I guess

[michellebarkley]

You can use any format either comma or space. but it must be readable.

[kitchen87]

When I use comma without space between keywords.

[bermuda]

Hi, this point has such very very small little bit tiny minute effect that might not even be worth the long discussions. Both formulas are widely used on the web and they are acceptable.

[dsouza]

i use both formats.and i have not yet got any differences.

[aimhigh]

I think there is no difference using commas, underscore "_", or space as long as it is readable.

[Mike Fleming]

See the difference for me was the tight control on KW charachters. 80 char for keywords doesn't leave much space per page for all the kw's you want to jam in there, so why take up the room of one or two more kw's with spaces between each word? Google and yahoo have crawled my pages and there is not one space in the meta - 'keyword' code lines on any of my pages and i'm page ranked no.1 no.'s 1-10 (organic) for most of my search results, so obviously the robots don't much care for spaces or underscores etc. a simple comma to split each kw seems to sufice. :eek:

[Wit]

You mean you have proof that your keywords meta tag shot your site to #1? Please share.

:)

[Mike Fleming]

what i meant wit was,
Its a combo of all of the factors, recip links, content related links, no black hat stuff, kw's desity etc.
But how I know the char ceiling on the kw's was keeping me back is:
When I put up my first verision of the site, I was looking at my compeditors pages and source code, some of the sites on Page 1 had 400 to 600 kw's in the meta tag. ? so this suited me as there are 26 counties in Ireland all about 5 to 8 letter words and I offer 4 different services on my site with all of there kw's , so my first ver.1 had a few hunderd kw's. submited it to the big 3 and I came in right in the back.
Changed the kw. char to 80 and spread the kw's I needed to other pages on the site I wouldn't mind people landing on. The only other changes I made were small cosmetic changes to imgs and spellings on content.
a couple of crawls later I'm up on page 1 and 2 on se results.
I'll admit tho wit, and I know your on these forums longer than I (much, much)
most of the tips and rules I picked up from these forums , and if i'm honest........ i'm not on page one for single kw's - the hottly contended ones any way. but hopfully with some ppc and some more changes (slight) and a bit of time that will change.
I hope this clarify's for vous/
mike f

[Wit]

I'm happy that you're doing great, but I wouldn't thank the kw meta for that. Looks like all your other efforts are paying off. Kudos, great stuff.

[Mike Fleming]

No not entirely, but they played there part, to a degree, with the density, title, description and all that combo.
My point is that unless your trying to sell spaces or underscores or want less kw space. then leave them out.
No?

[Wit]

It doesn't matter to me: I haven't used the kw meta tag on my pages for years. Besides, I'm not aiming for a gazillion keyphrases per page anyway. So even IF I used the tag, there would be plenty of room for my compact (and unique) list on each of my pages :)

[poddster]

What you need to mind is the number of characters for the metatags. There's one for the title and another for the description. You have to sum up all the number of characters and make sure that it won't go beyond what Google prescribes.

[Gayan]

I shouldn't matter either way.

[convert2hybrid]

I've been told to just use commas and no spaces. But I've done it the other way with both, no big differences seen though.

[Wit]

Of course not.

Since the "keywords" meta is ignored anyway (by the serious bots), it's not gonna make any difference.

Good call :)