🔍 Overview
This article answers three common questions from Search Atlas users: whether deploying meta keywords affects your Google rankings, whether Search Atlas supports instant indexing, and why click counts in shared reports may not match what you see in Google Search Console (GSC). Read on for clear, practical answers to each.
🏷️ Do Meta Keywords Impact Site Rankings?
The short answer is no. Google officially stopped using the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal in 2009. Adding or removing meta keywords will not improve or hurt your position in Google search results. Other major search engines, including Bing, also ignore or heavily discount this tag.
Here is what you should know:
- Meta titles and meta descriptions do matter. They influence click-through rates and how your pages appear in search results.
- Meta keywords are a legacy field. Including them causes no harm, but they provide no SEO benefit with modern search engines.
- If you are auditing existing pages, do not prioritise adding or removing meta keywords. Focus your effort on optimising meta titles and descriptions instead.
Search Atlas includes tools to help you generate and manage meta titles and descriptions. Refer to the platform's navigation to locate the relevant meta tag features.
⚡ Does Search Atlas Support Instant Indexing?
Search Atlas does not currently offer a dedicated instant indexing feature integrated directly into the platform. To get pages indexed as quickly as possible, you can take the following general steps:
- Use Google Search Console directly. The fastest way to request indexing for a specific URL is to use the URL Inspection tool inside GSC and submit a crawl request for that page.
- Submit your XML sitemap. Make sure your sitemap is submitted and up to date inside GSC so Google can discover your pages efficiently.
- Check for technical crawl issues. Ensure there are no technical barriers preventing Googlebot from discovering or crawling your pages. Search Atlas provides audit tools to help identify such issues — refer to the platform's navigation to locate them.
- Build internal links. Pages with strong internal linking are discovered and crawled faster. Use Search Atlas's content planning tools to structure a well-connected site.
If instant indexing via the Google Indexing API is a feature you would like to see added to Search Atlas, you can submit a feature request through the support chat widget.
📊 Why Do Click Counts in Shared Reports Not Match GSC?
It is common to notice differences between the click data shown in a Search Atlas shared report and the data you see directly in Google Search Console. This discrepancy is expected and typically has the following causes:
- Date range differences. The date range selected when the shared report was generated may not match the date range you are currently viewing in GSC. Always confirm both are set to the same period before comparing numbers.
- Data sampling and delays. GSC data can be delayed by several days and may be subject to sampling, meaning the numbers you see in GSC at any given moment may not yet be final or complete.
- Report snapshot timing. A shared Search Atlas report captures data at the time it was generated. If GSC updates its data after the report was shared, the numbers will diverge.
- Filter differences. GSC allows filtering by country, device, search type, and other dimensions. If your GSC view has active filters that differ from how the Search Atlas report was configured, click counts will not match.
To resolve a discrepancy, compare both sources using the same date range, with no additional filters applied, and allow at least 48–72 hours for GSC data to stabilise before drawing conclusions. If numbers still appear inconsistent after accounting for the above, note the specific date range, the values shown in each source, and the report link so that our team can investigate further.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.