META - information about document

Description :

The META tag specifies information about the document or creates an HTTP response header. The META tag has no effect on the appearance of the web page. It is intended for use by other programs, such as search engines or web browsers.

If the NAME attribute is supplied, the META tag specifies information about the document. You can use the META tag to convey information about the page to search engines. For example, you could create a META tag that summarizes the content of the page and another one that lists the important concepts or keywords in the page.

If the HTTP-EQUIV tag is supplied, the META tag creates an HTTP response header that can convey information to the browser about what to do with the file. For example, you can use the META tag to tell the browser how often to refresh the page. For example, you could specify that a web page that displays stock prices or late-breaking news updates automatically every five seconds without the user having to request it to update.

You must provide either the NAME or the HTTP-EQUIV attribute.

Syntax and sample Meta Tags

<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="title" content="Html and learning come together here.">
<meta name="keywords" content="html,learning">
<meta name="description" content="Learn html the easy way at html4newbies">
<meta name="language" content="en">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="2 days">
<meta name="author" content="www.html4newbies.com">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="rating" content="SAFE FOR KIDS">
<meta http-equiv="description" content="Learn html the easy way at html4newbies">
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="admin@html4newbies.com">
Attributes

NAME specifies a name for the metadocument information. Different programs that access metadocument information expect different values for this attribute. Widely recognized names include:

Description: A short, plain language description of the document. This is used by search engines to describe your document. If your document has very little text, is a frameset, or has extensive scripts at the top, you can use this tag to provide a description of a page for search engines.
Keywords: Comma-separated keywords to be used by search engines to index your document in addition to words from the title and document body.
Author: Usually the author's name.

HTTP-EQUIV specifies the name of the HTTP response header field. Widely recognized values include:

Expires: The date and time after which the document should be considered expired. An illegal date, such as "0" is interpreted as "now." Setting the Expires attribute to 0 may thus be used to force a modification check at each visit. Dates must be given in RFC850 format, in GMT.
Refresh: Specifies a delay, in seconds, before the browser automatically reloads the document. Optionally, specifies an alternative URL to load.
Set-Cookie: Sets a cookie. Values with an expiration date are considered permanent and are saved to disk on exit.

CONTENT provides content information.

If the NAME attribute is supplied, the CONTENT attribute specifies the content or description. For example, if the NAME attribute is author, the CONTENT attribute would be the author's name, such as Joe Bloggs. If the HTTP-EQUIV attribute is given, then the CONTENT attribute specifies necessary information for the HTTP header. For example, if HTTP-EQUIV is set to refresh, then the value of the CONTENT attribute should be a string that specifies how often to refresh the page, optionally including the URL to show next time the page is refreshed.

The value of the CONTENT attribute is always a single string. If the HTTP-EQUIV attribute requires multiple attributes itself, the value of the CONTENT attribute must be a string containing all the attributes and their values separated by semicolons. If any of the subattributes is a string, use single quotation marks as the inner string delimiter.