Are you still using the Meta field on Knowledge Articles?

[RogueFader]

Hi all

We're using ServiceNow Knowledge with Now Assist / AI Search, and historically we've populated the Meta field with keywords to improve findability.

Since rolling out AI powered search, it seems the platform is finding articles from the article content itself rather than relying on metadata.

I'm interested to know if people are still using the Meta field? and If so, what are you storing in that field? is this a move away from keyword tagging?

It was discussed about how valid it is these days and do we even need it since we have GenAI, however in the back of my mind, I'm still reluctant and thought we could still retain it for taxonomy, reporting and governance (e.g. Service, Service Offering, Product, Audience, Knowledge Type) rather than traditional keyword search

I'd be interested to hear how people are approaching metadata in a AI ServiceNow Knowledge environment and whether you've found it still adds value.

Thank you.

[manishasinh]

I can totally understand why  we are getting confused

Older versions of ServiceNow displayed warnings discouraging users from relying on the Meta field when AI Search was enabled. In some newer releases, that warning appears to have been removed or is no longer consistently shown.

However, the removal of the UI message does not necessarily mean the behavior changed. The documentation still states that AI Search does not index Meta tags.

Sharing few suggestions given by ServiceNow for AI Search relevance:

• Well-written article titles
• Meaningful article content
• Proper knowledge categories
• Topics and taxonomy
• Search result improvement rules
• AI Search tuning and ranking configurations

[BrunoPer]

I believe these references will help in this discussion:
Knowledge Base readiness • Zurich Enable AI • Docs | ServiceNow
Best practices to use your knowledge articles with... - ServiceNow Community

ServiceNow documentation still mentions ensuring metadata completeness in KB articles in their Knowledge Base readiness for AI on the ServiceNow AI Platform.