Have You Ever Meta-Index Like This?
By Randal L. Schwartz
HTML permits the inclusion of metadata in the header of the document. This metadata is not intended for direct human consumption, but is instead meant for programs to get additional data about a Web page for automated indexing or other collation. Because the metadata categories aren't defined by the HTML specification, the metadata is merely by convention. But in particular, two kinds of metadata are understood by most of the search engines: keywords and description.
Most of the spidering search engines will note a metadata description entry like the following, and use it when displaying a hit of your page:
<meta name=description
content="The Home Page of Randal L. Schwartz">
And most of the spidering search engines will also note a metadata listing one or more keywords separated by commas, as follows:
<meta name=keywords content="Perl, Perl training, JAPH, UNIX, Karaoke">
The intent of these keywords is to inform the search-engine spider that these are the most important topics discussed on this page, even if the exact words are not present on the page. Abuse of both of these metadata types has lead to interesting levels of games between the spider-spammers and the spider searchers, so don't count on your Web page being listed solely based on your keyword list.
Other metadata is also in use; I found a rather nice chart at
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