So for the past four months or more, Google has not supported the Google News meta keywords tag. Don’t confuse this with the normal meta keywords tag, which Google has not supported in ages. This is specific to news publishers and a special keyword tag in the format of <meta name="news_keywords&quot.

The old help document explained it as:

But sometime before October, Google quietly removed it from the help document and did not publicly communicate the change. So publishers continued to use it that is until Joost deValk noticed the other day and asked about it.

This morning, as I reported on Search Engine Land, Google confirmed they no longer use the news meta keyword tag. John Mueller of Google said so on Twitter:

The meta news keyword tag came late in the game in 2012 and I used it regularly for my news stories. I guess I no longer need to use it anymore.

I am just upset Google didn’t communicate this earlier but I doubt that was intentional.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update from Google: