I am going to be developing a new site for a local company. I noticed in their footer (above the copyright) they have various keywords and cities listed that are terms that a person could search for. The cities are cities located around the business location.

While the text is visible and not hidden (which I know is a no-no) I believe this isn't a good practice as the text has little to do with the page other than the fact that the company provides these services.

My question is this: According to Google Webmaster Guidelines is having text like this, that provides little, if any, value, something that should be removed from the site? To me it smacks of keyword stuffing but I could be wrong.

The list is around 20 or so items, counting the cities.

I should note that it does appear that the site does rank well in Google.