Over the years Meta tags have become quite misunderstood and usually used incorrectly on the Internet. With the help of this document a brief explanation of Meta tags will be given, a complete break down of all the Meta tags that we are aware of, and recommendations of which ones you should or shouldn't use for your website.
What are Meta tags?
This question gets asked to us all the time. Meta tags are a snippet of informational code that has been located between your <HEAD> </HEAD> tags that are apart of your HTML document you've generated.
There are two known styles/attributes that you'll see for Meta tags. These happen to be:
1. <META HTTP-EQUIV="name" CONTENT="content">
2. <META NAME="name" CONTENT="content">
Back in the mid 90s Meta tags were developed to assist in the rapid growth of web pages, but soon after in the late 90s something major happened. Many Webmasters, generally those that ran adult orientated websites, abused the use of Keyword Meta tags. Many unrelated keywords were placed on their site in the Meta tag section, causing their pornographic sites to begin appearing in search results not related to topics such as "Smithsonian". Eventually the major search engines began discontinuing the use of Meta tags for main criteria when listing sites. Google always refused the use of Meta tags, and now currently only will index Google Meta Tags. There are several searches that do read Meta tags in their own way. |
