QUESTIONSome of the search engines on the net seem to have the ability to index my site based on something called 'meta tags'? What are they and how do I use them?ANSWERThe <META> tag is an important HTML tag that can be a great help in ensuring that meaningful information about your site is included in the crawler archives (e.g., AltaVista, WebCrawler, etc).
It doesn't display anything, but many of the coolest search sites use the contents of the META tag as the 'abstract' or summary description of the site and its contents instead of just the first few dozen words on your page. You'd use the tag like this:
<META name="description" content="If you're wondering what's playing at the Stanford Theatre, we have the entire movie schedule online in a fun and searchable format.">The results of a search on a system like Alta Vista will show the description as the summary of the site rather than the first few dozen words. Here's how it might look:
<META name="keywords" content="movie theatre, classic movies,Palo Alto">The Stanford TheatreThere's also a bit more information about the <META> tag available at the AltaVista site if you're still curious.If you're wondering what's playing at the Stanford Theatre, we have the entire movie schedule online in a fun and searchable format.
http://www.intuitive.com/stanford - size 4k - 18 Aug 96
