Question: What is a Meta Tag?
Answer:
A meta tag contains meta data about the web page it is in. A meta tag will not affect the way the page looks, and in most cases won't even be seen by the person reading the web page. But meta data can contain useful information about the page that programs and web spiders can use.
Types of Meta Tags
There are dozens or hundreds of different meta tags. All are optional on a web page, although some are strongly recommended. And there are basic types of meta tags:
name— these tags can be almost anything, and simply create a name=value pair in the header of the HTML document. Most named meta tags are not used programmatically, although they can be. The most commonly seen name meta tags are description and keywordshttp-equiv— these tags are used to bind a variable to the HTTP header field. These are often used by web pages to perform specific actions. The most commonly used http-equiv meta tag is the refresh tag.
Recognizing Meta Tags in HTML Documents
There are some simple ways to recognize meta tags in an HTML document:
- meta tags are always found in the <head>
- meta tags look like:
<meta>
