HTML <meta> Tag

If this site has been useful, we’d love your support! Consider buying us a coffee to keep things going strong!

Description

The <meta> tag in HTML is a metadata element that provides information about a web page to browsers, search engines, and other services. It is placed within the <head> section of an HTML document and does not display any content directly on the page. Instead, it conveys descriptive, structural, or behavioral information about the document, which can influence how the page is interpreted, indexed, or displayed.

Common purposes of the <meta> tag include defining the character encoding of the document, specifying viewport settings for responsive design, setting author or copyright information, providing descriptions and keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), and controlling caching or content policies.

Although the <meta> tag itself is empty and self-closing in HTML5, its presence can significantly impact how a page behaves and how it is presented to users and services. For example, defining the character set ensures that text is displayed correctly across different browsers and systems, while viewport settings ensure the page scales properly on mobile devices.

Properties

Permitted Parents: A <head> element. If the http-equiv is not an encoding declaration, it can also be inside a <noscript> element, itself inside a <head> element
Content: None. It is an empty element.
Start/End Tags: Start tag: required, End tag: forbidden

Example

HTML

<head>

  <meta charset="UTF-8">

  <meta name="description" content="Description of website">

  <meta name="keywords" content="Keywords Used">

  <meta name="author" content="Authors Name">

</head>

Attributes

charset: Specifies the character encoding for the HTML document.
content: Specifies the property's value.
http-equiv: Used for HTTP response message headers. For example, http-equiv can be used to refresh the page or to set a cookie. Values include content-type, expires, refresh, and set-cookie.
name: Name for the property. Can be anything. Examples include keywords, description, author, revised, generator, etc.

Global Attributes

The <meta> tag also supports the Global Attributes in HTML5

Event Attributes

The <meta> tag also supports the Event Attributes in HTML5

Browser Support

The following information will show you the current browser support for the HTML <meta> tag. Hover over a browser icon to see the version that first introduced support for this HTML tag.