Meta Data Need help!

Does any know if you can have too many "key words" in Meta Data?
Some one here said that Google does not use meta data to list your site, if search engines don't use meta data to find you, what do they use?
Any help anyone can offer on Meta data would be greatly appreciated!
On a site I just built I have lots of meta data and when you type in "european images" in Google it pops up first.
So meta data must make some difference, right?
Very :confused

 

Different search engines use different kinds of data to database ur site. They sometimes change this criteria. I don't know about Google's exact method, but engines generally consider a few things: page title, the first heading in the document, the first few words or paragraphs in the document, META data, page elements like pix, documents they link to, and possibly other stuff. They like ppl to make pages that are well arranged, rather than a poor page with magic meta data so lots of others visit it, so they try to look at the whole page rather than just what the author says it is.