Transcript Document
META TAGS AND SEARCH
ENGINE MECHANISM
WHAT’S META TAGS ?
Information placed in the HTML header of a Web page,
providing information that is not visible to browsers. The most
common meta tags relevant to search engines are keyword
and description tags.
A special HTML tag that provides information about a Web
page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how
the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such
as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the
page is about, and which keywords represent the page's
content. Many search engines use this information when
building their indices.
WHAT’S META TAGS ?
META tags are placed between the <HEAD> and </HEAD>
tags of a webpage.
<html><head>
<title>HTML At a Glance</title>
<META name="Title" content="Meta Tags for Webpages">
<META name="Description" content="This page shows...">
<META name ="Keywords" content="Tags, Search Engines">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#C6E2FF">
.......................
</body>
</html>
TYPES OF META TAGS
Abstract
Sometimes a spider will also record an abstract, along with a
description. The abstract is simply a longer description that
summarizes the page.
Now readers who use a service that supports the abstract
meta tag will see a full and complete summary of your page.
Please note, however, that abstract is not widely supported at
this time.
<META NAME="abstract" CONTENT="Studies show that the
Paso Fino breed is among the most even tempered and best
riding horse ever bred ...">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Author
The author meta tag lets you identify the author of the page.
Sometimes this gets used; most often you'll be including it for
your own benefit or for the benefit of anyone looking at your
code
<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Serkan Arel">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Avoiding Indexing
Using a robots meta tag and setting its content value to
"noindex" tells the search spider to skip this page when it
builds its index.
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Character Sets
This tag works IF the browser supports the character set you
want. There are many languages that might be supported.
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-8">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Classification
The classification Meta tag suggests to the search engine
appropriate categories where the website should be indexed.
The suggestions may or may not be followed. Search engines
which employ editors to review websites will make their own
decisions. Visit search engine websites to get an idea what
their indexes look like and select categories that you know are
appropriate for you.
<META name="Classification" content="Computers,
Education, HTML">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Copyright
All content on a webpage is copyrighted without need to say
so. The date of first publication of the page may assist later
claims of priority.
<META name="Copyright" content="Copyright © Jan. 12,
1999">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Description
Normally, a search spider will use the first few words on your
page as a sample of what the searcher will find there.
However, if you insert a description meta tag the spider will
use the value in the content switch as the page's description
instead. Now, the description that appears after your site's
name in a search result will be much more meaningful to
potential readers.
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="a short, but
appealing, description of the page, usually less than 200-250
characters long.">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Distribution
There is little use for this tag. content might be "global," "local"
or "iu" (for Internal Use). This might be of value to the
administrators of intranets who distribute files to servers
having specific access requirements.
<META name="Distribution" content="global">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Expiration
The expiration meta tag lets you identify the expiration date of
the page. Sometimes this gets used; most often you'll be
including it for your own benefit or for the benefit of anyone
looking at your code.
<META NAME="expiration" CONTENT="Sun, 11 Apr 2000
12:00:00 GMT">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Generator
Like a little advertisement, some HTML page editors
automatically include a generator meta tag in every page they
create.
<META NAME="generator" CONTENT="PageMill 2.0">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Keywords
The keywords meta tag lists words or phrases that a searcher
might use in looking for your topic. The more words that
match, the better the odds are that your site will be in the top
10 matches.
Now, the odds are improved that someone looking for "horses
good for trail riding" will find your site.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="horse, paso fino, ranch,
stable, stallion, breeding, gait, horse show, paint, peruvian,
horseback, riding, trail horse">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Pragma
This purpose of this tag is to prevent browser caching. It does
not work with all browsers.
<META http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Refresh
This meta tag tells the server to refresh the contents of the
browser window. The refresh will happen in 30 seconds and
the new page is named "index2.html”
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="30;
URL=index2.html">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Revisit-After
The idea here is that a search engine will automatically
reschedule a visit to the website periodically. For an E-zine,
this might be crucial to getting a new issue into circulation.
<META name="Revisit-After" content="31 days">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Robots
Normally, this tag is only used when it is desired that a
website, or some of it's pages, should not be indexed by web
crawlers or spiders. However, various options, as shown
above, may be used singly or in combination. The attributes
follow/nofollow indicate whether links contained within a page
should be followed. Some folks may want only a main menu
page indexed so that all references to the website pass
through that page.
<META name="Robots" content="all; none; index; noindex;
follow; nofollow">
TYPES OF META TAGS
Title
Using this tag permits having a different and perhaps longer
title for the website than you wish to have in the standard html
<title> tag. It is often felt that the html tag's title should be
relatively brief because it is used for bookmark titles.
Never fail to utilize the html <title> tag. Some search engines
will not use this one.
<META name="Title" content="HTML At A Glance Tutorials &
Webpage Design">
MAIN SEARCH ENGINES
• AltaVista
• Excite
• Google
• Hot Bot
• InfoSeek
• Lycos
• Open Text
• WebCrawler
• Yahoo
HIDING SOME INFORMATIONS
Using Pictures instead of TEXTS
Using <tag><tag> which does not effect output
Using Robots META Tag
<META name="Robots" content="none; noindex; follow;
nofollow">
GOOGLE BASICS
Choosing search terms
Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the
information you need.
Start with the obvious - if you're looking for general
information on Hawaii, try Hawaii.
SEARCH : Hawaii
GOOGLE BASICS
Capitalization
Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters,
regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower
case. For example, searches for george washington, George
Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the
same results.
SEARCH : gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN = George Washington
GOOGLE BASICS
Automatic "and" queries
By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your
search terms. There is no need to include "and" between
terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are
typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further,
just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to
Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii.
SEARCH : vacation hawaii
GOOGLE BASICS
Automatic exclusion of common words
If a common word (such as 1, a, an ...) is essential to getting
the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in
front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)
Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search,
which simply means putting quotation marks around two or
more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where
are you") are included in the search.
SEARCH : Star Wars Episode +I or "Star Wars Episode I"
GOOGLE BASICS
Phrase searches
Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact
phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your
search terms.
SEARCH : "the long and winding road"
GOOGLE BASICS
Negative terms
If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for
example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your
search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related
the meaning you want to avoid.
For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy
lakes, but not bass-heavy music:
SEARCH : bass -music
GOOGLE BASICS
Synonym search
If you want to search not only for your search term but also for
its synonyms, place the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of
your search term.
For example, here's how to search for food facts and nutrition
and cooking information:
SEARCH : ~food ~facts
GOOGLE BASICS
"OR" search
To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an
uppercase OR between the terms.
For example, here's how to search for a vacation in either
London or Paris:
SEARCH : vacation london OR paris
GOOGLE BASICS
Domain search
You can use Google to search only within one specific website
by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by
the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name.
For example, here's how you'd find admission information on
the Stanford University site:
SEARCH : admission site:www.stanford.edu
GOOGLE BASICS
Others Simple Keys
SEARCH : define: World Wide Web
SEARCH : form 1040 filetype:pdf
SEARCH : movie: red pill blue pill