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application-name author classification copyright description formatter generator google googlebot http-equiv HandheldFriendly keywords rating robots verify viewport

HTML 5 metatag Elements

Format of HTML metatag elements

HTML metatag elements have a content attribute and either a name attribute or an http-equiv attribute.

<meta name="..." content="..."/>
<meta http-equiv="..." content="..."/>

Converting to HTML 5

We are working on converting to HTML 5. Please visit Meta Tags in HTML 5 on the HTML 5 standard version of this site.

Most Common Metatags

The most commonly used HTML metatags include:

Metatags for Search Engine Optimization ( SEO )

Metatags for HTML pages on Mobile / Handheld Devices

List of HTML Metatags

This is a complete list of HTML metatags documented here:

The name="application-name" Metatag
The name="author" Metatag
The name="classification" Metatag
The name="copyright" Metatag
The name="description" Metatag
The name="formatter" Metatag
The name="generator" Metatag
The name="google" Metatag
The name="googlebot" Metatag
The http-equiv Metatag
The name="HandheldFriendly" Metatag
The name="keywords" Metatag
The name="rating" Metatag
The name="robots" Metatag
The name="verify" Metatag
The name="viewport" Metatag
The name="application-name" Metatag

The name="application-name" HTML metatag

Examples

<meta name="application-name" content=""/>

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The name="author" Metatag

The name="author" HTML metatag

Examples

<meta name="author" content=""/>

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The name="classification" Metatag

The name="classification" HTML metatag

The classification metatag

Examples

<meta name="classification" content=""/>

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The name="description" Metatag

The name="description" HTML metatag

The description metatag contains a human-readable summary of the web page. The description may appear in the results of some search engines.

Examples

<meta name="description" content="A reference of HTML tags, attributes and metatags
in HTML version 5, and the differences between HTML version 4 and version 5."/>

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The name="formatter" Metatag

The name="formatter" HTML metatag

The formatter metatag

Examples

<meta name="formatter" content=""/>

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The name="generator" Metatag

The name="generator" HTML metatag

The generator metatag

Examples

<meta name="generator" content=""/>

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The name="google" Metatag

The name="google" HTML metatag

The google metatag provides directives for the Google search engine.

notranslate
indicates that the page should not be translated into other spoken languages by Google Translate http://translate.Google.com/support/

For translation of literals on HTML pages, such as those used in forms and tables, see the Literals.com project in Google code.

Examples

<meta name="google" content="notranslate"/>

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The name="googlebot" Metatag

The name="googlebot" HTML metatag

The googlebot metatag is equivalent to the robots metatag but provides directives specifically for the Googlebot robot and is supposed to be ignored by other web robots, crawlers and spiders.

archive / noarchive
indicates whether or not the page should be archived by Google
follow / nofollow
indicates whether or not Googlebot should continue to crawl other pages referenced in the hypertext links on the page
imageindex / noimageindex
indicates whether or not the page should appear as the referring page for images that appear in Google's search results
index / noindex
indicates whether or not the page should be included in Google's search index
odp / noodp
indicates whether or not the description from the ODP should be used
snippet / nosnippet
indicates whether or not a snippet of the web page should be shown in the search engine's results
unavailable_after:date
allows specifying the time and date that Googlebot should discontinue crawling and indexing the page

Examples

<meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive"/>

See http://www.Google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79812

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The http-equiv Metatag

The http-equiv HTML metatag

Default Style

The http-equiv="default-style" metatag specifies the default style sheet for the page. For example, this could be a site-wide template:

Examples

<meta http-equiv="default-style" content="/site-template.xsl ; type=application/xslt+xml"/>

Meta Refresh

The http-equiv="refresh" metatag can be used to refresh the current page at regular intervals or redirect to a different page after a given period of time. The first parameter of content is the time to wait, in seconds. The second parameter is the URL of the next page to be displayed and is optional.

Examples

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10"/>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;http://www.ExampleOnly.com/"/>

http-equiv Metatag for Other HTTP Headers

Other frequently used http-equiv metatags for HTTP headers include:

Cache-Control
which indicates how long the page should remain in the client's cache
Content-Disposition
which indicates how or when the content should be displayed
Content-Type
which indicates how the document is encoded, in terms of both the character encoding used and the syntax of the content.
Expires
which is an alternative way of indicating when the content should expire from cache
X-UA-Compatible
X-UA-Compatible is used to indicate to an IE browser which version of the rendering engine should be used to display the page. This metatag does not affect other browsers such as Firefox and Opera, which in general attempt to avoid bloating the size of the browser code by displaying web pages only one way according to established standards. (Supporting multiple rendering engines presents some major challenges, especially when content rendered by one engine accesses embedded content rendered by a different engine).

Examples

<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache"/>
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="max-age=120"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Disposition" content="inline; filename=spreadsheet.xls"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml;charset=UTF-8"/>
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Day, dd Mon yyyy hh:mm:ss GMT"/>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>

Differences between HTML 5 and earlier versions

  • http-equiv="Content-Language" has been deprecated. The lang attribute should be used instead.

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The name="HandheldFriendly" Metatag

The name="HandheldFriendly" HTML metatag

Examples

<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="true"/>

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The name="keywords" Metatag

The name="keywords" HTML metatag

Examples

<meta name="keywords" content="html5,html 5,html codes,html tags,html elements,html tutorial,html coding"/>

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The name="rating" Metatag

The name="rating" HTML metatag

The rating metatag

Examples

<meta name="rating" content=""/>

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The name="robots" Metatag

The name="robots" HTML metatag

The robots metatag provides directives for search engine crawlers.

archive / noarchive
indicates whether or not the page should be archived by a search engine
follow / nofollow
indicates whether or not the robot should continue to crawl other pages referenced in the hypertext links on the page
imageindex / noimageindex
indicates whether or not the page should appear as the referring page for images that appear in search engine results
index / noindex
indicates whether or not the page should be included in the search engine's index
odp / noodp
indicates whether or not the description from the ODP should be used
snippet / nosnippet
indicates whether or not a snippet of the web page should be shown in the search engine's results
unavailable_after:date
allows specifying the time and date that robots should discontinue crawling and indexing the page

Examples

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"/>
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"/>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/>

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The name="verify" Metatag

The name="verify" HTML metatag

The verify metatag on the default page of a web site is used to verify the ownership of the web site for access from Google Webmaster Tools. http://www.Google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35659

Examples

<meta name="verify-v1" content="aBCdefGHIjK/mnOpQRSTUVWxyzabCdEfGhIJKlMnoPQ="/>

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The name="viewport" Metatag

The name="viewport" HTML metatag

The viewport metatag

Content of the viewport metatag

width
device-width or a floating-point value
height
device-height or a floating-point value
user-scalable
a boolean true/false value indicated by 0 or 1
initial-scale
a floating-point value
maximum-scale
a floating-point value

Examples

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; height=device-height; user-scalable=1; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.4"/>

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Last updated Sunday September 19, 2010

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