<META>

Frontpage 2000

Description:

Metatags are a way for you to define your web page and web site to the outside world. You can declare the title, keywords and description, which help your placement in search engines. In addition, you can specify who owns the copyright, how often the page is to be visited by search engines and many other useful pieces of information. (See Meta-Tags page for our Metatag creation form to easily create your own Metatags for your web site)

There are two type of Metatags.

HTTP-EQUIV

These tags are the equivalent of http headers. When you click on a hyperlink which beings with http:// you are asking that a page be transferred to your browser using the http protocol. What happens is the following.

The web server makes sure the page exists
It sends back an http header block which contains information about the page
It sends the page itself.

What HTTP-EQUIV Metatags do is define additional information to be sent to the browser in the http header. This gives the web site creator additional control over this data.

NAME

The NAME attribute is used to define information which is to be referenced outside of the document. This includes data passed to search engines and directories, spiders and other entities.

Metatags must be placed between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags, before the <BODY> tag. On framed pages, be sure and include the Metatags on the frameset page and the framed pages.

A special note about legality regarding Metatags. Some people have "borrowed" someone else's Metatags and have been successfully sued in the courts. In general, this seems to have involved the inclusion of trademarked keywords, but in theory it would be possible to copyright a set of keywords. It is best to be sure and create your own descriptions and keywords.

Attributes:

http-equiv="name" content="value"

Specifies data so that an HTTP (web) server can include additional data in it's header fields. HTTP headers are defined in RFC1945 (HTTP/1.0) and RFC2068 (HTTP/1.1). May be one of the following.

Value	Description and example
content-language	Specifies the language.
content-script-type	Defines scripting language used.
content-style-type	Defines type of style sheets used.
content-type	Specifies type of data within document.
expires	Expiration date of the document.
ext-cache	Define Netscape external cache.
imagetoolbar	This turns off Internet Explorer's image toolbar that appears when you hover over an image
page-enter	Specifies the transition effect that is to be performed when the page is loaded.
page-exit	Specifies the transition effect that is to be performed when the page is unloaded.
pics-label	Includes rating information so content filters can do their job.
pragma	Do not locally cache documents.
refresh	Indicates the document displays for a specified amount of time before switching to a new URL.
set-cookie	Sets the name and value for a persistent cookie.
site-enter	Specifies the transition effect that is to be performed when the site is loaded.
site-exit	Specifies the transition effect that is to be performed when the site is unloaded.
window-target	Specifies the name of the frame for the current page.

name="value"

Name and description of the element that is being set.

Value	Description and example
abstract	Define a secondary description.
author	Records the name of the author of the document.
classification	Classify the site into the appropriate category.
copyright	Used to include copyright information in the document.
description	Some search engines pick up this description to show with the results of searches.
distribution	Declares whether a document is available to the web or on an intranet.
doc-class	Indicates completion status of document.
doc-rights	Indicates copyright status of document.
doc-type	Specifies type of document.
expires	Expiration date of the document.
generator	The name of the program that created the document.
googlebot	Define pages to be excluded from googebot indexing.
keywords	Inform search engines what your web site or page is about.
MSSmartTagsPreventParsing	Use this tag to prevent any Microsoft product from automatically generating smart tags.
owner	Define the owner of the page or site.
progid
rating	A simple rating for a site.
refresh	Indicates the document displays for a specified amount of time before switching to a new URL.
reply-to	Email address of contact for document.
resource-type	Indicates the type of web resource.
revisit-after	Defines how often search engine spiders should revisit your site.
robots	Define pages to be excluded from robot indexing.

Examples:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; 
    charset=windows-1252">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
<meta http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1 
   "http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen false comment 
   "RSACi North America Server" for "http://internet-tips.net" on 
   "2000.03.14T23:37-0800" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
<meta http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1 
   "http://www.classify.org/safesurf/" l r (SS~~000 1))'>
<meta name="author" content="Richard G. Lowe, Jr.">
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright © 1999-2001 Richard Lowe 
   and Claudia Arevalo-Lowe, All Rights Reserved">
<meta name="description" content="HTML tag reference guide">
<meta name="distribution" content="GLOBAL">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML hypertext markup language web 
   pages">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta name="rating" content="GENERAL">
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="20 Days">
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="ALL">

A complex series of Metatags precisely defines what the document is all about.