A meta tag gives a spider specific information, such as keywords or site summaries, about a site. In Web lingo, meta tags are defined as "information about information."

Meta tags are written in HTML code. They stay behind the scenes - the end user never sees them. A Web author may surround sentences, even whole paragraphs, with meta tags. Certain spiders then read the information in the tags as a way to index the site.

Unfortunately, meta tag information is not always reliable. It may or may not accurately reflect the content of the site.

Some spiders (e.g. Excite, Lycos) do not honor meta tags. This means that they do not index the content of the meta tag. The body text of a page will be still indexed even if meta tags are present.

Often these spiders include meta descriptions when a meta description is present on a page and when it contains valid text about the page it is on. The meta description tag is used to return an abstract of the page (written by the Web publisher) instead of the summary that the search engine would gather from the full text of that page.

Importance of META tags and other factors

Many webmasters focus on the "METAtags" and lose sight of the importance of the HTML title and the plain-text content of the page. METAtags are brief instructions that you can include in the header of your Web pages.

For instance, the "description" METAtag lets you to enter a few lines that describe the current page. Those words then appear as the description for your page in results lists at AltaVista, instead of the default of the first few lines of text.

But what people don't realize is that for ranking purposes, the HTML title and first lines of text are still very important. METAtags do not take precedence. They are text also. So if your page is poorly designed, with random words associated with graphics, and with a meaningless HTML title, your description METAtags are not going to help your ranking. You would be better off with a page that clearly stated what it was about in the title and the visible content.

You can also have "keyword" METAtags. "Keyword" is a misnomer. Many webmasters misunderstand the purpose of such METAtags and presume that the search engine acts like a database and that these are the only words on a page that are important for search. On the contrary, most crawlers index every word on a page, and every word (and the order in which they appear) is important. The purpose of the "keyword" METAtag is simply to allow you to add synonyms -- words that are appropriate for what's on your page -- that describe what's there but that do not actually appear on that page. One of the best uses for "keyword" METAtags is for foreign translations of the main words on your page, so, for instance, somebody searching in French will find that page.

Many webmasters think that by using "keyword" METAtags, they are getting some advantage in the ranking or making up for the fact that their pages have very little text content, just flashy effects. But, those words are worth little more than any other word in the main text of the page. There is nothing "key" about it. You have simply added a few more words to the page in a place that is not visible.

Basically, METAtags are a band aid to help you deal with pages that don't state what they are about in clear text, right up front. Do it right to begin with, and you don't need METAtags at all. You'll get far better results in terms of search engine traffic that way.


Using META Tags to Create the Summary Description

The META tag description field can be used to specify an exact description of a site. The META tags that are used will not be displayed on a Web page. However, it will determine the summary description when a site is retrieved as a search result. Make sure that the description adequately summarizes the contents of a site. A description can include up to approximately  200 characters of text. If META tags are not used to describe a site, the Web page description will be derived from other text on the page.

In the main HTML file (the file containing the <FRAMESET> tags); use the <META> tag within the <HEAD> element as follows:

<META name="description" content="Write your description here">

Do not use any HTML tags within the description or content part of the META tag.

• Example:
  Suppose the HTML at the top of a Web page looked like:

  <HEAD>
  <TITLE>The Kids In The Hall Home Page</TITLE>
  <META name="description" content="Home page for The Kids In The Hall, Canada's funniest comedy group.">
  </HEAD>
  

  The following title and description would appear when a page is displayed as a search result:

  The Kids In The Hall Home Page
  

  Home page for The Kids In The Hall, Canada's funniest comedy group.

Using META Tags to Define Index Terms for Your Page

When a site is added to Go.com's index, all the words on the page are included with the exception of any text within a <Comments> field. The META tag keyword field can be used to specify additional key words or synonyms that describe the contents of a site. META tag keywords are used in the indexing process but will not display on your Web page. The keywords can include up to 1000 characters of text. Be sure that the keywords chosen are relevant to the contents of the page.

• Example:
  <META name="keywords" content="Write your keywords here, in a comma separated list">

  For example, if the HTML at the top of your Web page looked like:
  

  <HEAD>
  <TITLE>Landing Venture Capital</TITLE>
  <META name="description" content="Tips on obtaining venture capital for your hi-tech start-up.">
  <META name="keywords" content="asset based lending, capital enterprise funding, equity funding, expansion capital, funds for growth, growth financing, underwriting, venture investment">
  </HEAD>