Talk:Meta element/Archives/2013

This is an archive of past discussions about Meta element. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Comments

'scheme' is mentioned as one of the four original valid attributes but is neither linked nor further discussed in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.187.148.31 (talk) 07:48, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

How are meta tags distinct from metadata? Anyone think this page should be incorporated into the article on metadata? Or perhaps the link should be made more explicit? NickW 14:56, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Oppose Meta tag has enough information to be its own article. Furthermore, meta tags and metadata are not exactly the same thing... --Alvinrune]] 17:59, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Oppose The meta element is fairly important, and other HTML elements have their own pages. --holizz 19:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose Meta tags as a phrase often used to refer to search engine implications of meta tags, in common vernacular. Meta refresh should, of course, be referenced on that article, but is special and different enough to warrant it's own page. Furthermore, I've generally referenced this very article as a quick reference (as it's not a piece of markup I use often) and would not want to crawl through a much larger article on 'meta tags in general' in order to copy/paste a quick snippet of code. --Unnamed person November 2006

Using Meta Tags for SEO external link

Hi, I am Sean, the writer of http://sean-pollock.com/tutorials/meta-tags-and-seo-guide/. For many months my site has been listed on this page until a few days ago. Reading through the history I understand why this link was removed, my website would be classified a "personal blog" and therefore a link typically not considered. I wish however to dispute this and let another editor make the decision. The article was intended to be the "definitive" guide to tags. It describes the function and usefulness of all important meta tags (most of them not listed on this page), and specifically how to apply them to a website for SEO purposes. It is an error-free, meticulously written article unmatched in quality except by the W3's official articles on the subject. The difference between my article and W3's being that mine covers more elements and the average person will better understand mine. One may argue that there is no experimental evidence or sources for my information (besides w3) but one must also realize that there are no trusted experiments or sources on the entire topic. The article is ranked second on Google for "SEO Meta tags", and is arguably the best and most popular article on the topic. If there is any things that should be changed on my article to further support Wikipedia's guidelines, please let me know- I am willing to change it. As I already stated- I wish the article to be the best on the subject. As conflict of interest guidelines suggest, it is not my decision to add this link. Thus I leave the decision to another editor, please consider. Thank you for reading. seanxpollock —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seanxpollock (talk • contribs) 00:16, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that you're link is useful- and that it fits the External Link guidelines as far as I'm concerned. It contains useful, copyrighted information and properly sources the W3. I also wouldn't define your site as personal, it's a business correct? So I'll add it in and see what other have to say. I'm not experienced with Wikipedia, fyi- I just know my search engine stuff. 99.247.100.95 (talk) 04:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

search engines

According to this article, engines have been "veering away" from using META tags for indexing since "the early 2000s", so... 3-6 years? I would figure that they're either done veering or have at least veered quite a bit by now so that imo we should probably verify to what extent they are still used (if at all.) --Anaraug 22:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Long time computer guy but relatively new to the detailed nature of website structure as it relates to marketing and $$ generation. However, I've changed my homepage away from google and other sites that meta-refresh simply because I think ANYTHING done to a person's system without their EXPLICIT knowledge and permission is really an invasion of privacy at minumum and if pushed to certain levels, criminal. I'm not sure at this point how Meta tags and meta refresh are similar in nature but if so then sure, put it in to the meta data article. I think meta refresh is a bit more devious because now the site is actually enabling the browser into action without the user's knowledge or consent.

Meta Refresh Tags should have a separate page from Meta Tags. It would be easier for people to find information about Meta Refresh if it is in a separate page from Meta Tags as it was for me when searching on Google.

I agree generally with the above poster on meta-refresh, in particular that having its own article is valuable for access through Google.

Interested in this sentance: "An alternative to META elements for enhanced subject access within a web site is the use of a back-of-book-style index for the web site." - its not easy to use the citations provided to locate an example of this technique in use on the web. It is an interesting concept but unless good examples can be provided then it should be marked as a possible/suggested alternative.

"Newer search engines like Google and FAST have never had any support for the META keywords tag." Is there a citation that would back this up? I thought Google gave the META keywords tag a small weighting. ChopMonkey 16:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

comment - There speculations that the meta-keywords are used by Google, but only if the keywords can also be found within the visible page copy. This is not 100% proven and should not be included in the article for this reason or at least state that it is speculation, based on tests by several individuals. The meta-description is used by the search engines, not for ranking purposes, but as snippet/description of the page in the SERPS. They don't do that in all cases and also use in some cases the description from the Open Directory Project or Yahoo! Directory, if not explicitly disabled via the NOODP and NOYDIR values for the ROBOTS attribute. I just extended the article regarding those values. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 14:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

This article seems to be about search engine optimisation & does not cover any of the caching options or considerations at all eg, http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/metatags.html or http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/. I would suggest it needs a couple of new paragraphs to be useful. Rolandneilands (talk) 04:50, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge with Meta_Refresh and remove 'Alternative' section

I believe there is some confusion within this discussion as to the nature of this article. In my mind it is clearly about the META tag as it relates to HTML, in the same way the IMG tag just another HTML tag. In the case of the META tag it has a wider range of purposes and uses - of which only one of them is Search Engine related.

META allows a range of other embedded meta-data within a document, whether its to tell a program scrapping the page that it contains a thumbnail, or whether telling a browser that the user would like to you to redirect to another URL in 10 seconds. Its all meta data read by something.

As such, I would suggest that the separate article 'Meta_refresh' should be moved under this. I would also propose that the reference to 'Alternative to meta elements' be deleted as it is inaccurate. An index isn't an alternative to the META tag, it is actually a human-readable index that is similiar in nature but by no means an alternative. Its like saying that an abacus is an alternative to a computer. Sure they have some common roots but they're in different leagues and one has much more potential than the other. --nycmstar (talk) 18:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

meta keywords and wikipedia

The article gives the impression that meta keywords are almost irrelevant to SEO. If this is the case, why does Wikipedia itself include meta keywords on each page? eg (from this page):

Would Wikipedia be so visible in searches if these tags were not present? Do they serve another purpose besides SEO? If so, that should be explained, otherwise this seems a bit of a contradiction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.61.202 (talk) 01:48, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Overloading of word "attribute"

The article uses the word "attribute" to refer to at least three concepts:

HTML attributes
The value of the name attribute
A comma-delimited component of the content attribute for meta robots.

This is confusing. The article should be rewritten to only use the word "attributes" for HTML attributes. Some other terms should be used for the other concepts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.2.120.180 (talk) 19:11, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

http-equiv redundant?

What's the http-equiv meta element good for? As it seems to me, it just adds redundant information. --Abdull (talk) 00:04, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

It has (and only ever had) one advantage. If your pages are hosted on a server that you can't fully control (i.e. you don't have control Apache's httpd.conf or .htaccess files), then you can still use this to set (mostly) the equivalent of HTTP response headers, even if you can't control the real HTTP headers themselves.

If you do have control over the real headers, then use the headers. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:42, 5 September 2011 (UTC)