Importance of META keywords

When in comes to achieving top search engine rankings how large of a role do keyword tags actually play? This question does not have an easy answer. There was a time when every webmaster used them and sometimes even overused them. I've read that at one point in time the keywords tag had an impact on a web site’s position within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Now the keywords tag has little impact on where a site will appear in the search results. I've also been told that meta tags will not affect your ranking in Google, although they WILL change your appearance on Google. And that is important because a well-written description could be the only factor that affects a user's decision to choose your website over another. The importance of this tag may have diminished over the years but it might still be worth it to add keywords because there may still be other search engines out there that still use it. It doesn't take long to write them so you really don't have anything to lose.