The Meta Element
As we explained in the previous chapter, the head element
contains general information (meta-information) about a
document.
HTML also includes a meta element that goes inside the head
element. The purpose of the meta element is to provide
meta-information about the document.
Most often the meta element is used to provide information
that is relevant to browsers or search engines like describing
the content of your document.
Note: W3C states that "Some user agents support the
use of META to refresh the current page after a specified number
of seconds, with the option of replacing it by a different URI.
Authors should not use this technique to forward users to
different pages, as this makes the page inaccessible to some
users. Instead, automatic page forwarding should be done using
server-side redirects" at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#adef-http-equiv.
Keywords for Search Engines
Some search engines on the WWW will use the name and content
attributes of the meta tag to index your pages.
| This meta element defines a
description of your page:
<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials
on HTML, CSS, XML, and XHTML"> |
| This meta element defines keywords
for your page:
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, DHTML, CSS, XML,
XHTML, JavaScript, VBScript"> |
The intention of the name and content attributes is to
describe the content of a page.
However, since too many webmasters have used meta tags for
spamming, like repeating keywords to give pages a higher
ranking, some search engines have stopped using them entirely.
Unknown Meta Attributes
Sometimes you will see meta attributes that are unknown to
you like this:
| <meta name="security" content="low">
|
Then you just have to accept that this is something unique to
the site or to the author of the site, and that it has probably
no relevance to you. |
