HTML <meta> (Meta-Information) Tag

Example

<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="language" content="EN">
  <meta name="description" content="add up to 160 characters">
  <meta name="keywords" content="your, keywords">
  <meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
  <meta name="copyright"content="company">
  <meta name="author" content="John Doe, [email protected]">
  <meta name="distribution" content="Global">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>

Meaning

The <meta> element specifies general information about a document that can be used in document indexing.

It also allows a document to define fields in the HTTP response header when it is sent from the server.

Version: HTML 2, 3.2, 4, 4.01, 5

Standard Syntax

HTML: <meta name="application-name|author|description|generator|keywords|viewport" content="text">

XHTML: <meta name="application-name|author|description|generator|keywords|viewport" content="text" />

Browser Support

Status

Attributes

Attribute	Value	Description
charset	characterSet	Specifies the character encoding used by the document.
content	text	Gives the value of the document metadata or pragma directive when the element is used for those purposes.
http-equiv	content-security-policy content-type default-style refresh	When the http-equiv attribute is specified on a meta element, the element is a pragma directive.
name	application-name author description generator keywords viewport	Specifies a name for the metadata

Global Attributes

More Examples

Define the character encoding for the document:

HTML: <meta charset="UTF-8">
XHTML: <meta charset="UTF-8" />

Define keywords for search engines

HTML: <meta name="keywords" content="your, keywords">
XHTML: <meta name="keywords" content="your, keywords" />

Define description for search engines

HTML: <meta name="description" content="description up to 160 character">
XHTML: <meta name="description" content="description up to 160 character" />

Define a description of your web page:

HTML: <meta name="author" content="John Doe, [email protected]">
XHTML: <meta name="author" content="John Doe, [email protected]" />

Refresh document every 1 minute:

HTML: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60">
XHTML: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60" />

Setting the viewport to make your website look good on all devices:

HTML: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
XHTML: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />

By Default CSS Value(s)

None.

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