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ClubMed · 07-14-2003, 02:39 PM

Whats the difference between the head tags:

Meta
Keywords

Also which one is used by search engines?

Thanks.

Idigguns · 07-14-2003, 02:50 PM

"Keywords" IS a Meta tag. For example... <meta NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="......">

I think most search engines use Meta tags. Take a look at the ones on my site if you like. I used the Meta tag generator at Bravenet.com, it's free.

omalleytrading · 07-14-2003, 03:30 PM

"META" information -- whether on web sites, databases or on a manilla folder -- is information about the information. It's a way to put the information into context, or provide a more descriptive sense of what the data is.

In your filing cabinet, the labels or handwriting on the manilla folders in META data about what's in the folder. It could be a client's name, a vendor's business card, or notes jotted down to remind you that the folder contains your 2002 tax returns, and the date you mailed them.

In a database, the META data might be the size of a particular table, the layout of the fields within a table, or a text comment that describes what type of information the table contains.

On a web site, META tags provide information about the web page. Typically they're used to provide a brief synopsis (DESCRIPTION) of the page, as well as a set of KEYWORDS that one might use to find that page in a search engine.

In past years, search engines relied on this information heavily to help determine how it would rank the various web pages within the search results. These days, very few of the major search engines rely on the META tags for their primary ranking calculations. At best, they use that data as the blurb they show in the search results.

crouse · 07-14-2003, 03:33 PM

Meta Tags I use Alot

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> 
<HTML> 
<HEAD PROFILE="http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core"> 
<TITLE>WEBPAGE TITLE HERE--SHOWS UP IN TITLE BAR</TITLE> 
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="20 or LESS KEYWORDS HERE"> 
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="DESCRIPTION OF WEBPAGE HERE"> 
<!-- BEGIN metatag.txt SSI --> 
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" href="http://LINKTOYOURICOFILEHERE/favicon.ico"> 
<LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:YOUR COMPANY EMAIL ADDRESS HERE"> 
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> 
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="ALL"> 
<LINK REL=SCHEMA.VW96 HREF="http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/VW96-schema.html"> 
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="www.YOURWEBSITENAMEHERE.com"> 
<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="Hand Coded"> 
<META NAME="revisit-after" CONTENT="15 days"> 
<META NAME="DC.Language" SCHEME="RFC1766" CONTENT="EN"> 
<META NAME="DC.Coverage.PlaceName" CONTENT="United States"> 
<META NAME="DC.Title" CONTENT="NAME OF YOUR BIZ HERE"> 
<META NAME="DC.Creator" CONTENT="AUTHOR OF WEBSITE"> 
<META NAME="DC.Subject" CONTENT="20 or LESS KEYWORDS HERE"> 
<META NAME="DC.Description" CONTENT="SHORT DESCRIPTION OF PAGE HERE"> 
<META NAME="DC.Publisher" CONTENT="NAME OF BIZ OR PERSON HERE"> 
<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" CONTENT="TRUE"> 
</HEAD>

OuTpaTienT · 07-14-2003, 03:42 PM

Different search engines might use different meta tags, giving more or less importance to different ones.

Here's the meta tags I use on my page:

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta NAME="language" content="en-us">
<meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="3-D, 3D, graphics, images, rendering, inside the OuTpaTienT mind..., POV-Ray, Persistance of Vision, raytracing, 3DS, computer graphics, Simon the kick ass cat, poems, original art, tenacious d">
<meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="inside the OuTpaTienT mind..., original 3D raytracing art, Tenacious D, misc links, and Simon the kick ass cat.">
<meta NAME="Author" CONTENT="OuTpaTienT">
<meta NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">
<meta NAME="revisit-after" content="5 days">

<meta NAME="robots" content="index,follow">
<meta NAME="rating" content="general">

There are some strict rules as to limit of characters and how to use some of the words in conjunction with text on your page if you want to get the best results from the search engines.

Meta Tags
HTML META, REL and REV Tags
AnyBrowser.com - META Tag Overview
Free META Tag Analyzer and META Tag Help
How To Use HTML Meta Tags
Magic with Meta Tags

ClubMed · 07-15-2003, 05:46 AM

What are these tags for:

<meta NAME="revisit-after" content="5 days">
<meta NAME="robots" content="index,follow">

?

Thanks for all the info everyone.

muno · 07-15-2003, 05:55 AM

The robots tag tells the searchengine robots what to do, index the page and follow links.
-M

//edit: Here's a link for your convenience
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html

OuTpaTienT · 07-15-2003, 05:58 AM

If I remember correctly, the revisit tag tell the search spiders how often to index your page.

And the robots tag tells the spiders if you want all the pages that are linked from your page also indexed or not.

675,865 reviews, 402 today

675,865 reviews,
402 today