NetInsert - Meta Tags

Meta Tags

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1. Introduction

Meta tags provide a way to specify meta data for a document, i.e. data about the document itself rather than of the content of the document. A detailed description of the use of meta data is given in the HTML 4.01 specification.

NetInsert uses meta data to index a web page in the directory. The meta data must indicate in which category the web page shall be indexed. The meta data may optionally define additional information for the web page, which can be used to control the appearance of the web page in the directory.

2. Why are meta tags used?

There are several reasons why the data for a web page is defined in the form of meta tags:

Identification of the sender. If the information is based on e.g. the use of a web form or an email, it is not possible to identify the sender with any sufficient degree of certainty. By using meta tags the source of the information is unambiguous and the information can be trusted.
Invisibility. Information defined in meta tags is hidden and does not change the visual appearance of the web page. Hence, a regular visitor to the page does not have to be concerned with directory classification, subject description or any other data describing the page in a web directory or a search engine.
Legal permission. By declaring the meta tag for netinsert the owner of the web page has given NetInsert permission to show a link to the page.
Update mechanism. By using the page itself as the data source a mechanism for automatically updating a web page in the directory is made possible. All web pages in the directory are continuously verified by the NetInsert robot, and any changes in the source are immediately reflected in the listing for a web page in the directory.

3. Declaration

Meta tags are defined in the html source code of the page. A meta tag does not change the visible appearance of the web page. The meta tags should be placed within the html header element. An example of meta tags declared in a correct source context is:

<html>
<head>
<meta name="netinsert" content="0.0.1.8.1.1">
<meta name="author" content="My Company">
</head>
</html>

The first meta tag in this example is specifying a value of 0.0.1.8.1.1 for the property netinsert. This means that the web page is indexed in the category 0.0.1.8.1.1 in the NetInsert directory. The value 0.0.1.8.1.1 is an address in the NetInsert taxonomy system.

If there are multiple definitions of the same meta tag, the last defined tag will be used.

4. Properties

All meta tags which are used in NetInsert have a general meaning. The only exception is the netinsert tag which exclusively specifies a category in the NetInsert directory. For example, the meta tags for "author", "keywords", etc, are not specific to NetInsert and they can be reused by other search and navigation engines.

The following list describes all meta properties (tags) which are defined in NetInsert. The meta tags can be generated using the meta tag wizard.

Property	Meta tag	Max characters	Description
Category	netinsert	64	Defines which category the web page shall be indexed in. This tag is the only mandatory tag.
Title	title	64	Defines the title to be used for the web page or web site. (Note: this tag is only used if the <title> element is not defined.)
Description	description	255	Describes the contents, the purpose or the meaning of the page. (Note: if this tag is not declared the first readable lines of text will be used as the description.)
Hover	hover	64	Defines a hover message which is shown when the mouse is over the link to the page.
Author	author	128	Defines the author(s) of the page.
News	news	128	Use this tag to inform about the latest news. If a news tag is specified, a news icon will be added to the presentation of the page in the index. By clicking on the icon, the news flash is displayed in a pop up window.
Keywords	keywords	255	Keywords are used by NetInsert to find pages during a search. Keywords are also commonly used by search engines to index web pages
Revision	revision	64	Specifies a page or site revision
E-mail	email	64	Specifies an email address. The email address is not published and is only used by NetInsert to warn the site administrator if the page is subject to removal due to problems with the page.
Expire	expire	64	Specifies an expire date for campaign pages, special offers etc. After the expire date the page will be removed from the directory. The date must be specified on the form: yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2000-10-27 for october 27 2000 (ISO 8601 standard format)
Robot revisit	revisit	64	Defines the number of days between successive visits to the page by the NetInsert robot. If the value is outside the range of 4 - 31 days the robot will use the nearest value within the range. The robot will temporarily disregard this tag and use the minimum interval if: There is a problem with the page The page is new The page has changed

5. Format

NetInsert will automatically generate all meta tags required for indexing a web page. This happens if the button "Insert Page" is pressed in the category where the user wants to index the web page. The meta tag wizard can also be used to generate the meta tags. If the tags are manually generated, the following requirements must be taken into consideration when creating the tags:

The meta tag declaration must be located in the first 16 KB of the html source code (if lengthy Javascript declarations are placed before the meta tag declarations this may explain why the NetInsert robot may not be able to find the tags)
Netinsert will only parse the attributes name and content.
Specifying a lang attribute has no meaning. The language and country of the web page is given by the category.
The <link> element is not supported
Both double quote and single quote can be used as delimiters of the value of an attribute. If the value does not contain any spaces, a delimiter is not necessary.
If the value for an attribute contains html elements the tag is ignored.
Meta tags in XHTML are supported. A meta tag in XHTML must be closed as shown in the following example:
```
<meta name="netinsert" content="0.0.1.8.1.1" />
```