Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
They used to be, but today they hardly are. Google ignores them completely and focuses more on the content of the page, and on the content of the links linking to you site.
Full answer by GolezTrol: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/7297 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Need it done for your business? UphillTech.