HTML Reference Guide : META Command

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<META> Command

Command Syntax:
<META command parameters>
The <META> commands define and set global HTML Document characteristics. They also make declarative statements about the content of the HTML Document to the Internet, and, especially, to the WWW search engines and filtering software.
They are not strictly necessary since they produce no visible display within the HTML Document, but their use can

improve the performance of a browser viewing the site;
inform the Internet about the site contents, authorship, ownership and intent;
restrict or define some modes of access by webcrawlers; and,
improve the WWW search engine ranking of the site.
These commands are used only within the HTML Document <HEAD> Segment.
Command Parameters:

http-equiv="response header | refresh | rating"
This parameter can be used to declare a response header to the browser which identifies the HTML Document Type, language and ISO character set used.
Example:
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
In this example the content type is declared to be HTML code in simple text format using the ISO 8859-1 standard character set.

It can also be used to specify an URL as the object of a host server refresh. The refresh can also redirect the user to a different URL automatically after some specified number of seconds have elapsed.
Example:
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="15; URL=../index.html" target="display">
(Normally this command would not be broken.)
In this example the user is redirected to the URL specified after 15 seconds has elapsed. The target window for the refresh is named display.
Tip:
This technique can be used in a framed document to refresh the content of a single frame, as in the example above, in order to present a number of different displays to the user automatically at regular intervals. The redirects are arranged in a loop such that the last document in the loop redirects the user to the first.

The meta tag can be used to indicate an RSACi rating from the Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet for use by Internet filtering software. This makes use of the PICS-Label value for the http-equiv parameter as in the example below.
Example:

<META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1 "http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen true comment "RSACi North America Server" by "webmaster@iconbazaar.com" for "http://www.iconbazaar.com/" on "1997.10.20T10:36-0800" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
(Normally this command would not be broken.)
The webmaster of the site must register the site with RSACi for evaluation. RSACi provides the appropriate rating parameters (in this case, nudity=0 sex=0 violence=0 language=0) after a thorough review of the site content. Internet filtering software can make use of the ratings to govern access.

name="information type" content="information content"

These parameters are used to define the type and content of the information contained within the a meta tags. Names used for meta tag content are by no means standard, nor are the formats used to indicate information content, but the list and accompanying example below show some names and formats in common use:

author -
the accompanying content parameter would contain the author's name
copyright -
the accompanying content parameter would contain a copyright statement
description -
the accompanying content parameter would contain a brief description of the site content
distribution -
the accompanying content parameter would indicate the intended distribution or audience
keywords -
the accompanying content parameter would specify a number of keywords descriptive of site content for use by the WWW search engines in indexing the site
ownership -
the accompanying content parameter would contain the name of the site owner or publisher if different from the author

Example:

Below are the meta tags associated with the document you are viewing -

<META name="author"       content="Randy D. Ralph">
<META name="copyright"    content="Copyright © 1999 - 2002 NetStrider.  
                                   All rights reserved.">
<META name="description"  content="An Introduction to HTML commands
                                   with a command guide and reference">
<META name="distribution" content="global">
<META name="keywords"     content="HTML REFERENCE; HTML TUTORIAL; 
                                   HTML GUIDE; HTML QUICK REFERENCE; 
                                   HTML METACOMMAND; HYPERTEXT 
                                   MARKUP LANGUAGE; DOCUMENT SEGMENT; 
                                   HEAD SEGMENT; HEAD; META TAGS; 
                                   META">
<META name="owner"        content="NetStrider">

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