Meta Tags

Many search engines use a 'spider' to obtain information about your page. Spiders look for pieces of HTML code in your page called <META> tags. Meta tags should include a summary and keywords about your site so it will always be listed properly. Below are examples of how <META> tags are used:

Using META tags to create a site summary

META tags can be used to include a summary that can be displayed by a search engine when generating a search list. This summary, no more than about 25 words, is helpful in providing an accurate description of your site to users of search engines like Google or Yahoo!.

Suppose the HTML at the top of your Web page looked like:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Information Resources & Technology 
  - Stanford University School of Medicine</TITLE>

<META name="Description" content="Stanford University 
School of Medicine medical information resources & 
technology group">
</HEAD>

The following title and description would appear when your page is displayed as a search result:

Information Resources & Technology - Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine medical information resources & technology group

Using META keywords

META tags also let you insert keywords separated by commas that describe your site. Keywords should be words or phrases relevant to your site that users may look for in a search engine. For example, people looking for the IRT site would likely be searching for words like "IRT," "Stanford," and so on. Such a META tag would look like this:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Information Resources & Technology (IRT) 
  - Stanford University School of Medicine</TITLE>
<META name="Description" content="Stanford University School 
of Medicine medical Information Resources & Technology group">
<META name="keywords" content="stanford, medicine, medical, 
information, resource, resources, technology, technologies, 
IRT, network, networking, web, development, data, hipaa, 
library, computers, internet, intranet,">
</HEAD>

This way, when someone searches for one of the keywords listed, the search engine will put the IRT site in its results list.