FP2000: Using the META Element with Web Spiders, Robots

ID: Q205493

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

Web spiders (also called "robots") are a great resource for people searching the Internet, but they present a problem to Web page designers who want their pages to be seen and properly indexed. One popular solution to this behavior is to use the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) META element.


MORE INFORMATION

The META element is placed in the HEAD element to embed document meta- information that is not defined by other HEAD elements. This embedded information can be extracted by servers and clients to identify, index, and catalog specialized document meta-information. A META element can be written in one of two forms: META NAME and META HTTP-EQUIV. The NAME attribute is returned in the HEAD of the document, while the HTTP-EQUIV attribute is converted into the HTTP response header, which is parsed by the Web server.

If you plan to use a web spider, you should use the META NAME form as shown in these examples: 


<META NAME="author" CONTENT="John Doe">
<META NAME="date" CONTENT="12/31/97">
The NAME attribute declares a variable for the page and the CONTENT attribute assigns a value to the variable.

A META element standard for web spiders has evolved, which consists of two parts:

Description A brief description of the Web page.
Keywords One or more words that refer to the content that can be found on the page.


Two examples of this standard are as follow.

Example 1


<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Web Spider Information">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="robots, spiders">

Example 2


<META NAME="description" CONTENT="The Jogging Page">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="jogging, health, fitness">
NOTE: Some web spiders ignore the NAME attribute and use their own algorithm to generate a description of the page.

To add a META tag similar to the examples on your Web page, follow these steps:
  1. Open your page in the Page view of FrontPage.


  2. Right-click anywhere on the page, and select Page Properties.


  3. Click the Custom tab.


  4. In the User Variables section, click Add.


  5. In the Name box, type the meta name.


  6. In the Value box, type the meta content.


  7. Click OK


  8. Click OK again.


  9. Save the page to your Web.


Additional query words: kbhowto 2000RTMPublic 


Keywords          : fpedit fphtml 
Version           : WINDOWS:
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: July 1, 1999