Page "Meta element" Paragraph 25

Meta elements have significantly less effect on search engine results pages today than they did in the 1990s and their utility has decreased dramatically as search engine robots have become more sophisticated.

This is due in part to the nearly infinite re-occurrence ( keyword stuffing ) of meta elements and / or to attempts by unscrupulous website placement consultants to manipulate ( spamdexing ) or otherwise circumvent search engine ranking algorithms.