# Saying goodbye to Content Keywords

Tuesday, November 29, 2016


In the early days---back when
[Search Console](https://search.google.com/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](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468)
it immediately,
[Search Analytics](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6155685)
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!


Posted by [John Mueller](https://twitter.com/johnmu?rel=arthur),
Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland