Google Has Just Removed “Content Keywords” From ‎Webmaster Search Console

Google Has Just Removed Content Keywords Feature from the Google Search Console: one of the earliest features found in the Google Search Console when it was first built.

Content Keywords in Google Search Console Tool

In the early days - when Google Search Console was called Webmaster Tools, the content keywords feature was the only way to see what keywords Google Search Bot found when it crawled a particular website. It was very useful to webmaster & site owner to see a combined keywords lists of the most frequent keywords within a site that Google discovered. It was also pretty helpful to check Content Keywords section, if your site was hacked.

Content Keywords tool allows you to determine, What keywords Google Crawler seeing in your website. It shows the keywords that are repeatedly used on your website, along with keyword variations and significance. These data help you quickly intuit if you need more content created around certain keywords, themes and topics. It also shows you which pages the keywords appear on your website.

At November 29, 2016 John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Announced at Webmaster Central Blog that Google will be removing the “Content Keywords” section from Google Search Console. Here's the Mueller's Entire Post:

In the early days - back when Search Console was still called Webmaster Tools - the content keywords feature was the only way to see what Googlebot found when it crawled a website. It was useful to see that Google was able to crawl your pages at all, or if your site was hacked.

In the meantime, you can easily check any page on your website and see how Googlebot fetches it immediately, Search Analytics shows you which keywords we've shown your site in search for, and Google informs you of many kinds of hacks automatically. 

Additionally, users were often confused about the keywords listed in content keywords. And so, the time has come to retire the Content Keywords feature in Search Console.
The words on your pages, the keywords if you will, are still important for Google's (and your users') understanding of your pages. While our systems have gotten better, they can't read your mind: be clear about what your site is about, and what you'd like to be found for. Tell visitors what makes your site, your products and services, special! 

What was your most surprising, or favorite, keyword shown? Let us know in the comments!

Also Tweeted on @googlewmc

Content Keywords is retiring from Search Console. Please join us in bidding a tearful goodbye to our dear friend :) https://t.co/RAqchGC3Gt

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) November 29, 2016

How Does Google Search Consoles Come Up with Content Keywords?

The Content Keywords lists represent the keywords and their variants Google found when crawling your website. When reviewed along with the Search Queries report and your site's listing in actual search results for your targeted keywords, it provides insight into how Google is retrieving the content of your website.

The significance of each keyword reflects how often it's found on your site's pages. Click each keyword to see a sampling of pages on which it appears. Both keywords and their variants are listed in order of frequency of appearance.

This does not mean you’re ranking for these keywords or these keywords has any impact on your website ranking, it just means they’re the most relevant keywords for your site according to Google Bot.

If any unexpected keywords, such as “payday loan” or “Viagra”, appear on this page, this could be a sign that your site has been hacked.

Do Content Keywords in Search Console Tools Affect Search Rankings?

You you'll find thousand of article telling you that this section give us Opportunity To Discover New Keywords. Some SEO “Experts” continue to hype that, what we sees in the Content Keywords Section is the Most Important Keywords for your website & Google Give Priority To Those Keywords.

Simply, These Are All Lies Fake Gurus Love to Tell. Here's John Mueller Response:

At Oct 23, 2012 John Mueller Answered The Question on Google Product Forums"the keywords data shown in that Webmaster Tools feature is only based on the crawled content, not based on the relevance for indexing. For example, if you have a calendar on your pages, we might pick up the weekdays & month names very frequently, but that would not mean that the site is in any "penalized" because of that. Our algorithms are pretty good at picking up issues like that. 

On the other hand, if you see words there that are totally outside of your normal content (eg pharmaceutical product names, if your website isn't about that), then that would be a sign that something's not quite right."

I also told many times that, Content Keywords means that what your website is all about. What keywords YOU use in your site, their variants and occurrences in your website content, all are crawled by Google Crawler. For example, if SEO Expert has many occurrence and top on the Content Keywords list, then Google sees that your website is about SEO.


John Mueller also suggests that site owners should use the Fetch as Googlebot to verify keywords on a page or to use Search Analytics to check for keywords that are bringing searchers to the website.

Search Console Fetch as Googlebot

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