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MetaTags

..........Metatags

	Related Pages

Metatags are html coding in the source code that "lie" behind the Web page. That is to say, they are "invisible." They are important because they support a form of 'fielded" searching and information retrieval. Metatags create "special" fields.

<head>
<META NAME="title" content="Site Title">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Fname Lname">
<META NAME="Agency" CONTENT="OU">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="stop, go, yield"> -- seven or fewer terms in order of importance (most to least)
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="A web site about doing good stuff"> -- not to exceed 200 characters
<title>Page Name</title>
</head>

Metatags are also used to "regulate" or direct robot/spider/indexer activity. For example the following commands inform search robots whether the Web page is static (will remain the same) or dynamic (will change after each hit). Dynamic Web documents are usually not indexed because of the fluid nature of their content.

<META NAME="DOCUMENT-STATE" CONTENT="STATIC">

<META NAME="DOCUMENT-STATE" CONTENT="DYNAMIC">

Some metatags are designed to direct or bar robot entry/indexing of the page. Note that some robots honor the metatag and some do not. For more on the robot exclusion standard, see Charles P. Kollar, John R. R. Leavitt, and Michael Mauldin, Robot Exclusion Standard Revisited (dated June 2, 1996)

There are products that will generate metatags, but the process is fairly straightforward. If you must, check out Tagmaster , MetaTag Generator or some other on-line products.

Why use metatags?

There are three reasons to use metatags.

A number of the major search engines support fielded search. Metatags may provide better document indexing - and the commercial Web page preparers argue that the use of metatags may cause your page to be listed higher than those that do not use them
Metatags can be captured and imported into the indicated Z39.50 catalog fields.
It proves you know what you are doing.

Downside to metatags

Because they are author applied, there are no controlled vocabularies, no standards. Moreover they are not mandatory.

Aren there possible copyright and trademark infringements in their use? see Lloyd L. Rich (1999). Internet Legal Issues: Metatags

Upside to metatags

Metatags are easy to generate and apply. Very little coding knowledge is required to use them.

FYI

The metatags for this page are:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Metatags</TITLE>
<META NAME=GENERATOR CONTENT="Claris Home Page 3.0"> page automatically generated by the html editor, Claris in this case
<X-CLARIS-WINDOW TOP=0 BOTTOM=607 LEFT=0 RIGHT=1011>
<X-CLARIS-TAGVIEW MODE=minimal>
<META NAME="Title" CONTENT="Metatags">
<META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Wallace Koehler">
<META NAME="Agency" CONTENT="University of Oklahoma">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="metatag, LIS course, search, robot, index">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Web-based course in library and information science describing methods to index and manage the WWW">
</HEAD>