Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.
The meta element has four valid attributes: content, http-equiv, name and scheme. Of these, only content is a required attribute.
An example of the use of the meta element:
In one form, meta elements can specify HTTP headers which should be sent before the actual content when the HTML page is served from Web server to client. For example:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html" />
This specifies that the page should be served with an HTTP header called 'Content-Type' that has a value 'text/html'. This is a typical use of the meta element, which specifies the document type so a client (browser or otherwise) knows what content type to render.
In the general form, a meta element specifies name and associated content attributes describing aspects of the HTML page. For example:
<meta name="keywords" content="wikipedia,encyclopedia" />
In this example, the meta element identifies itself as containing the 'keywords' relevant to the document, Wikipedia and encyclopedia.
Meta tags can be used to indicate the location a business serves:
<meta name="zipcode" content="45212,45208,45218,etc." />
In this example, geographical information is given according to zip codes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tags
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