HTML Meta tags were originally designed to provide information to browsers and search engines. Many different Meta tags evolved in the early days of the Internet, but due to widespread abuse, many are ignored by search engines today and are therefore useless. Others have been rendered obsolete due to browser evolution.
As a general rule, you should not use an HTML Meta tag unless it serves a purpose. Useless Meta tags add unnecessary overhead to a Web page and pushes content further from the top of a script. Useless code must be downloaded along with useful code, and if you are trying to improve the performance of your Web pages, you need to eliminate everything that is not needed. When content is pushed further from the top of a script, it holds less relevance to a search engine.
Unnecessary Meta tags find their way into scripts because some designers believe they are beneficial. They are most likely basing this on information that is several years old. Five years ago the Keywords Meta tag was extremely important. Today the Keywords Meta tag has only
minimal value, if any, due to widespread abuse by site owners and the natural evolution of search engines. Some WYSIWYG Web design tools allow a designer to easily add Meta tags to a page, and a few naive designers take the "more is better" approach.
Some online HTML Meta tag generator tools are useful to help you to understand how to use Meta tags, while other are not. I have seen at least one online tool that generates a long list of customized Meta tags and assures users that this will help boost their rankings in search engines.
This is utter nonsense and such advice has no merit.
There is a class of meta tags that never has served any purpose other than providing information to a site owner or designer. These tags are therefore useless for search engines and browsers and therefore should not be used.
Useful Meta Tags
<meta name="description" content="An article that explains how to identify when a Web site has been penalized by Google.">
The Description Meta tag is the most useful of all and should be included on every Web page. The Description Meta tag shows up as the description for a Web page on most search engine results pages (SERPs). While it will not necessarily help you with search engine rankings, it is a powerful marketing tool that can be the determining factor when a user is deciding whether to click on your link or one of nine others on a SERP. The Description Meta tag should be unique for each page in your site and should accurately describe the contents of the page. The description itself should also be compelling.
<meta name="keywords" content="bad neighborhood, penalized site, webmaster guidelines">
The Keywords meta tag is not used by the major search engines, but is used by some smaller search engines. It it therefore worthwhile to include it if you want your site to appeal to a wide range of search engines. If you do decide to use it, every phrase listed in this Meta tag should appear on the page or you risk a penalty with the search engines that use it.
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache"> <meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache">
These cache related Meta tags prevent browsers from caching pages. This means the HTML script will not be stored by the browser. Caching is used by browsers to speed up the rendering of a Web page upon subsequent visits. These Meta tags are useful on pages where the content changes often. One version works for older browsers, while the other works for newer browsers and thus they are most effective when used in tandem.
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> <meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow"> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> <meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive">
The robots meta tag is used by search engine spiders to determine if the page should be searched for keywords and content (index/noindex) and if the hyperlinks on the page should be followed (follow/nofollow). The first version is technically the default for any page that does not
contain this Meta tag and is therefore serves no real purpose. The next three each serve a distinct purpose, depending upon what you want a spider to do. If you do not want a spider to index the page, include the "noindex" value in the content attribute. If a section of a Web site needs to be protected from spiders, use the "noindex,nofollow" values on each page in the protected section. This does not absolutely protect a page from being indexed. Sometimes the search engine spiders do not follow the rules.
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">
If you do not want the spiders to cache (archive or store) a copy of a Web a page, there is a noarchive value that can be used.
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
Google offers a googlebot Meta tag as an additional protection to prevent the Google spider (called googlebot) from indexing a page. Use of this meta tag would only affect Google spiders and not spiders from MSN or Yahoo.
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no"> <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false">
This Microsoft Meta tag is useful for preventing the annoying image toolbar from displaying when a user moves their mouse pointer over an image when using current version of Internet Explorer. Either version will work.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
The character set and language Meta tags may be useful for foreign
browsers whose defaults are set to different character sets and
languages.
Meta Tags That Are Ignored by Search Engines and Browsers
<meta http-equiv="reply-to" content="me@domainname.com"> <meta name="robots" content="all"> <meta name="revisit-after" content="15 Days"> <meta name="resource-type" content="document"> <meta name="classification" content="Internet"> <meta name="distribution" content="Global"> <meta name="rating" content="General"> <meta name="doc-class" content="Completed"> <meta name="generator" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> <meta name="classification" content="Advertising and Marketing"> <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true"> <meta name="copyright" content="John Doe Web Design"> <meta name="author" content="John Q. Public"> <meta name="doc-type" content="Web Page"> <meta name="doc-class" content="Published"> <meta name="doc-rights" content="Public">
Remember, the general rule is to avoid using a Meta tag unless it serves a specific purpose. If you do not find a specific Meta tag listed here, do some research and see if has any real value before you add it to a Web page.
Larry Kuck says
I have seen many articles on this topic with various points of view, and this one dismisses as useless many tags that I currently am using thanks to an online tag generator tool.
However, I was surprised to find the Smart Tags meta tag among the useless. I understand that Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft Office tools use this Smart Tags feature to insert links onto rendered Web documents if permitted to do so, though one source did say this tag may or may not work to prevent the Microsoft re-edit of my pages.
I have read before that minimizing overhead to bring the content up closer to the top of the page source script makes it more relevant to search engines.
I have seen some of the abuses of the Keywords tag, and or perhaps if it is used, best if those keywords appear in a header text (h1 – h6), since search engines assign more relevance to headers and strong text than the normal text in a page. Along that line, it is a good practice to follow a good outline, and I make use of the W3C HTML Validation Service’s outline tool.
TE says
Most meta tag generators continue to generate several virtually worthless meta tags. Many claim that using those meta tags will improve your rank positions. This is utter nonsense and thousands of articles on the web support my position.
The Microsoft Smart Tags meta tag was created to avoid the uproar that occurred when MS first announced the Smart Tags feature, which did intent to inject links into your content that would take users to other sites. That meta tag didn’t stop the outrage from site owners, so Smart Tags were never implemented.
diane says
I have a 40 plus cat rescue site so it is important that it be indexed for which I have meta tags.
I am adding 5 pages that are not cat related that I do not want to be indexed. If I use the NO INDEX tag on each of those 5 pages, can I be sure it will not affect the rest of my site? Thank you. diane
TE says
Hi Diane
Meta tags are intended to only affect the page on which they are found.
To block single pages, you want to use the following robots meta tag on each page you wish to block from indexing:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”>
This tells the spiders to NOT index the page, but DO follow the links to other pages. I’ve used it for years and have never seen it affect other pages in a site. Only place it on the pages that you do not want to see indexed.
Rose says
Thanks for the outline of the meta tags considered important / or not. I have streamlined the meta tags and it all makes perfect sense to me.
There are a few that I would like to query – some are standard such as ‘Distribution’, content-language, ‘document-rating’ – How useful are these now in everyone opinion?
A few meta tage that I had never seen until recent are popping up – ‘classification’ eg and ‘subject’ eg Is this something a webdesigner sat in NZ AA tourism just thought up one day and dont mean a thing or are they a useful addition?
jack says
Wow!
Very useful!
I’ve learnt SEO for days but could now see that the tutor gave me just an half of things. Thanks…
Andy Carloff says
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_name.asp — The W3Schools seems to think those tags are important, actually. Makes sense, too.
Doogie says
Hi Andy
The W3Schools article doesn’t give any indication that they think the meta tags used in their examples are important. It simply shows you how to use them. Two out of the three examples they give have not been used by any major search engines since the 1990s, which is when the W3Schools article was probably written.