meta data

Metadata is a set of data that describes other data.

Metadata summarizes basic information about data, which can make finding and working with particular instances of data easier. It is defined as the data providing information about one or more aspects of the data, such as:

— Means of creation of the data.

— Purpose of the data.

— Time and date of creation.

— Creator or author of the data.

— Location on a computer network where the data was created.

— Standards used.

It provides information about the content of certain item. For example, an image may include metadata that describes how large the picture is, the color depth, the image resolution, when the image was created, and other data. Metadata of the text document may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document was written, and a short summary of the document.

Web pages often include metadata in the form of Meta Tags. Description and keywords meta tags are commonly used to describe the Web page’s content. Most search engines use this data when adding pages to their search index.

Metadata can be added to a webpage using Meta Elements. The meta element provides metadata such as a document’s keywords, description, and author. Any number of meta elements may be contained in the HEAD of a document.

Meta elements comprise of a pair of values (or attributes): a name (noun) and a content qualifier (adjective), for example:

<meta name="keywords" content="cats, domestic short-hair (DSH), ginger" />

Common webpage-level meta-information includes:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

<meta name="description" content="Description of the page content" />

<meta name="keywords" content="Synonyms and phrases that classify the content" />