Introduction

There are many issues that arise when developing a website, the use of metatags is one of them. While there is no set standard for metatags yet, many people are using them. It is first important to know why people use them, how they are useful, how t o include these tags in an HTML document and which search engines support metatags. These tags can be a very valuable part of Web Devlopment and Adminstration because they incorporate vital information for search engines. Some search engines use metatag s to index information, but metatags are not only useful in the indexing of webpages, they also conatin information that can control the actions of browsers.

The following pages within this web site provide information on who uses these tags, which search engines support metatags, examples of metatags and the syntax of metatags.

What is a meta tag?

Meta tags are tags that contain information about the web page. These tags allow search engines to index your page according to the information contained in the tags. Meta tags are not visible on the web page itself and are not supported by all search e ngines. Meta tags are also a form of meta data in that they contain a little bit of information about a whole document.

Who should use meta tags?

Meta tags are not required tags in HTML documents so no one has to use them. It is suggested though, that anyone who wants their site to be indexed by search engines that do support meta tags, should use them. Meta tags can be very useful for web developers. They allow them to identify the creator of the web page, include keywords, and refresh parameters all very useful tasks for web developers.

Meta Tag Syntax

First thing to know when writing Meta Tags is where they go. This is quite simple, you just put them somewhere in the HEAD tag in an HTML document. Meta Tags can be written in two ways, either META NAME or META HTTP-EQUIV. The HTTP-EQUIV tag is typically used to control the actions of the browser viewing it. The NAME tag is generally used to provide useful information, such as author and copywright information. In addition, Meta Tags have no ending tag. So let's say you wanted to inc lude the author's name in the Metadata in the page. Here's how you would write that :

< META NAME = "author" CONTENT = "Mr. Rogers" >

This tag would simply let search engines know that Mr. Rogers is the author of this site. This information may never be seen by anyone, but a search engine will see it and use it. All tags will almost always have the CONTENT element included. This is wh at the actual Meta Data is. In this case Mr. Rogers.

Now for an example of the HTTP-EQUIV tag. One very useful thing that this can be used for is to refresh a page at a certain interval, or switch the page to another page without the user having to do anything. This code would be written as:

< META HTTP-EQUIV = "Refresh" CONTENT = "3;URL=http://www.VonFOX.Net" >

In this case the CONTENT element is telling the browser to send the user to a page located at "www.somepage.com", 3 seconds after loading has commenced.

This should give you the basic syntax of a Meta Tag. There are many different types of the META NAME tag and the META HTTP-EQUIV tag thatt a designer can use. If you would like to know more about them you may do so by going to the page titled, "Types of Meta Tags".

Types of Meta Tags

There are just a few of the many types of Meta Tags that can be very useful in getting your web site noticed by search engines. There are also tags that are useful for manipulating browsers. Below are a great deal of Meta Tags that are useful. They inc lude a description and a recommendation on whether or not they should be used. This list also includes what type of Meta Tag it is. The tags here are considered the most important Meta Tags for web developers to use. Examples of the syntax of these tag s can be viewed by clicking the examples link.

Tag	Type	Description
"Title"	Title	This tag is considered on of the most important tags. This will generally be listed in blue when the results are displayed in a search engine. This will also let the user know the title of the page they are visiting.
"Author"	Meta Name	This tag is used to let the search engine know who the author of the page is. It is useful when someone is searching for a certain author.
"Copywright"	Meta Name	This tag is mainly just to have your copywright information listed somewhere in your page. This tag is hidden, but some search engines may use it, and therefore rank your page higher if someone is searching for your company name.
"Description"	Meta Name	This is also a very important Meta Tag, because when the link to a page is displayed in a search engine this will typically be listed with the Title and the URL.
"Generator"	Meta Name	I would say this tag is never used by people who actually code the HTML into their pages by hand. It is used by HTML editing software such as Microsoft Front Page, or Homesite.
"Keywords"	Meta Name	This tag is very important when trying to get a search engine to notice your web page. By putting the right combination of keywords you may be ranked very highly in search engines. In addition, remember to include incorrect spellings and different variations of capitalization.
"Rating"	Meta Name	This tag serves as a form of rating system for search engines. It will let audiences know if the site is to be viewed by all audiences, or adults only.
"Robots"	Meta Name	This tag in instructions for search engines that visit your site. It will tell them which pages to index on your site, if any.
"Cache-Control"	HTTP - EQUIV	This tag will control how your page is cached. It can be set to be stored in public, shared caches, only private caches, not cached at all, and cached but not archived.
"Expires"	HTTP - EQUIV	This is used to set an expiration date for your page. The page will be deleted from a user's cache at the time of expiration.
"Refresh"	HTTP - EQUIV	This tag is an extremely powerful tag. It is used to set a refresh time on the page loaded. It can be set to either reload the current page, or load a different page after a certain amount of time. Don't forget to take users into a ccount when using this tag, some don't have browsers that this will work with.

Examples

META NAME

As said before the following example, the "Author" Meta Tag, will tell any search engines the name of the author, some of them include it in their description.

< META Name = "Author" CONTENT = "Kosmo Kramer" >

The following example, the "Keywords" tag, will tell most search engines what the page is about. In this case, it will tell the search engine that the page is about meta tags. Remember to include various spellings and capitalization in case people spell it wrong or differently.

< META Name = "Description" CONTENT = "meta tags, Meta Tags, Meta tags, meta Tags, Metatags, MetaTags" >

META HTTP - EQUIV

The following is another example of the "Refresh" tag. This will redirect a user to Yahoo's home page in 10 seconds.

< META http-equiv = "Refresh" CONTENT = "10; URL = http://www.yahoo.com" >

The following in an example of the "Expires" tag. What this will do control how long a page will stay cached. When expired the page will be removed from cache. One can keep a page from being cached by setting a past expiration date. All times are written in General Mountain Time when using this. If one were to use this example, the page would expire on January 18, 2001, one second after midnight GMT.

< META http-equiv = "Expires" CONTENT = "Mon, 18 Jan 2001 00:00:01 GMT" >

TITLE

This will post the title of the page on the title bar of the browser. It will also let the search engine know what the title is, almost all search engines will include this with the description of the site. This one will put the word examples in the title bar.

< TITLE > Examples < / TITLE >

What search engines search by meta tags?

There are many search engines on the Internet that people use. Some are more popular then others and each uses their own method for searching for web sites. Some search engines use people to find sites while others use a robot or a spider to find web si tes. Below is a list of some of the search engines that people use. Included is whenter or not these search engines use meta tags.