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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:


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:


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