A list of everything that could go in the
<head>
of your document.Table of Contents
- Recommended Minimum
- Elements
- Meta
- Link
- Social
- Browsers / Platforms
- Browsers (Chinese)
- App Links
- Notes
- Other Resources
- Related Projects
- Other Formats
- Translations
- Contributing
- Author
- License
Recommended Minimum
Below are the essential tags for basic, minimalist websites:<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<!-- The above 3 meta tags *must* come first in the head; any other head content must come *after* these tags -->
<title>Page Title</title>
Elements
<!-- Document Title -->
<title>Page Title</title>
<!-- Base URL to use for all relative URLs contained within the document -->
<base href="https://example.com/page.html">
<!-- External CSS -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<!-- In-document CSS -->
<style>
/* ... */
</style>
<!-- JavaScript -->
<script src="script.js"></script>
<noscript><!--no JS alternative--></noscript>
Meta
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
<!-- The above 3 meta tags *must* come first in the head; any other head content must come *after* these tags -->
<!-- Allows control over where resources are loaded from -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'">
<!-- Place as early in the document as possible -->
<!-- Only applies to content below this tag -->
<!-- Name of web application (only should be used if the website is used as an app) -->
<meta name="application-name" content="Application Name">
<!-- Short description of the page (limit to 150 characters) -->
<!-- In *some* situations this description is used as a part of the snippet shown in the search results. -->
<meta name="description" content="A description of the page">
<!-- Control the behavior of search engine crawling and indexing -->
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp"><!-- All Search Engines -->
<meta name="googlebot" content="index,follow"><!-- Google Specific -->
<!-- Tells Google not to show the sitelinks search box -->
<meta name="google" content="nositelinkssearchbox">
<!-- Tells Google not to provide a translation for this page -->
<meta name="google" content="notranslate">
<!-- Verify ownership for Google Search Console -->
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="verification_token">
<!-- Used to name software used to build the website (i.e. - Wordpress, Dreamweaver) -->
<meta name="generator" content="program">
<!-- Short description of your site's subject -->
<meta name="subject" content="your website's subject">
<!-- Very short (10 words or less) description. Primarily for academic papers -->
<meta name="abstract" content="">
<!-- Full domain name or web address -->
<meta name="url" content="https://example.com/">
<meta name="directory" content="submission">
<!-- Gives a general age rating based on sites content -->
<meta name="rating" content="General">
<!-- Allows control over how referrer information is passed -->
<meta name="referrer" content="never">
<!-- Disable automatic detection and formatting of possible phone numbers -->
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">
<!-- Completely opt out of DNS prefetching by setting to 'off' -->
<meta http-equiv="x-dns-prefetch-control" content="off">
<!-- Stores cookie on the client web browser for client identification -->
<meta http-equiv='set-cookie' content='name=value; expires=date; path=url'>
<!-- Specifies the page to appear in a specific frame -->
<meta http-equiv="Window-Target" content="_value">
<!-- Geo tags -->
<meta name="ICBM" content="latitude, longitude">
<meta name="geo.position" content="latitude;longitude">
<meta name="geo.region" content="country[-state]"><!-- Country code (ISO 3166-1): mandatory, state code (ISO 3166-2): optional; eg. content="US" / content="US-NY" -->
<meta name="geo.placename" content="city/town"><!-- eg. content="New York City" -->
- Meta tags that Google understands
- WHATWG Wiki: MetaExtensions
- ICBM on Wikipedia
- Geotagging on Wikipedia
Meta: Not Recommended
Below are the meta attributes which are not recommended for use as they had low adoption rate, or have been deprecated:<!-- Used to declare the document language, but not well supported. Better to use <html lang=""> -->
<meta name="language" content="en">
<!-- Google disregards & Bing considers it an indicator of spam -->
<meta name="keywords" content="your,keywords,here,comma,separated,no,spaces">
<!-- No evidence of current use in any search engines -->
<meta name="revised" content="Sunday, July 18th, 2010, 5:15 pm">
<!-- Provides an easy way for spam bots to harvest email addresses -->
<meta name="reply-to" content="email@example.com">
<!-- Better to use <link rel="author"> or humans.txt file -->
<meta name="author" content="name, email@example.com">
<meta name="designer" content="">
<meta name="owner" content="">
<!-- Tells search bots to revisit the page after a period. This is not supported because most Search Engines now use random intervals for re-crawling a webpage -->
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<!-- Sends user to a new URL after a certain amount of time -->
<!-- The W3C recommends that this tag not be used. Google recommends using a server-side 301 redirect instead. -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="300; url=https://example.com/">
<!-- Describes the topic of the website -->
<meta name="topic" content="">
<!-- Brief summary of the company or purpose of the website -->
<meta name="summary" content="">
<!-- A deprecated tag that does the same as the keywords meta tag -->
<meta name="classification" content="business">
<!-- Does the same as URL, older and not supported -->
<meta name="identifier-URL" content="https://example.com/">
<!-- Similar function to the keywords tag -->
<meta name="category" content="">
<!-- Makes sure your website shows up in all countries and languages -->
<meta name="coverage" content="Worldwide">
<!-- Does the same as the coverage tag -->
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<!-- Controls what user can access on the internet -->
<meta http-equiv="Pics-label" content="value">
<!-- Cache Control -->
<!-- Better to configure cache control server side -->
<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0">
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache">
Link
<!-- Helps prevent duplicate content issues -->
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/2010/06/9-things-to-do-before-entering-social-media.html">
<!-- Used to be included before the icon link, but is deprecated and no longer is used -->
<link rel="shortlink" href="https://example.com/?p=42">
<!-- Links to an AMP HTML version of the current document -->
<link rel="amphtml" href="https://example.com/path/to/amp-version.html">
<!-- Points to a CSS stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://example.com/styles.css">
<!-- Links to a JSON file that specifies "installation" credentials for web applications -->
<link rel="manifest" href="manifest.json">
<!-- Links to the author of the document -->
<link rel="author" href="humans.txt">
<!-- Refers to a copyright statement that applies to the links context -->
<link rel="copyright" href="copyright.html">
<!-- Gives a reference to a location in your document that may be in another language -->
<link rel="alternate" href="https://es.example.com/" hreflang="es">
<!-- Gives information about an author or another person -->
<link rel="me" href="https://google.com/profiles/thenextweb" type="text/html">
<link rel="me" href="mailto:name@example.com">
<link rel="me" href="sms:+15035550125">
<!-- Links to a document that contains an archive link to the current document -->
<link rel="archives" href="https://example.com/2003/05/" title="May 2003">
<!-- Links to top level resource in an hierarchical structure -->
<link rel="index" href="https://example.com/" title="DeWitt Clinton">
<!-- Gives the starting point of the document -->
<link rel="start" href="https://example.com/photos/pattern_recognition_1_about/" title="Pattern Recognition 1">
<!-- Leads to the preceding resource of the sequence the current document is in -->
<link rel="prev" href="https://example.com/opensearch/opensearch-and-openid-a-sure-way-to-get-my-attention/" title="OpenSearch and OpenID? A sure way to get my attention.">
<!-- Gives a self reference - useful when the document has multiple possible references -->
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://example.com/atomFeed.php?page=3">
<!-- The first, next, previous, and last documents in a series of documents, respectively -->
<link rel="first" href="https://example.com/atomFeed.php">
<link rel="next" href="https://example.com/atomFeed.php?page=4">
<link rel="previous" href="https://example.com/atomFeed.php?page=2">
<link rel="last" href="https://example.com/atomFeed.php?page=147">
<!-- Used when using a 3rd party service to maintain a blog -->
<link rel="EditURI" href="https://example.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD">
<!-- Forms an automated comment when another wordpress blog links to your wordpress blog or post -->
<link rel="pingback" href="https://example.com/xmlrpc.php">
<!-- Notifies a url when you link to it on your site -->
<link rel="webmention" href="https://example.com/webmention">
<!-- Loads in an external HTML file into the current HTML file -->
<link rel="import" href="component.html">
<!-- Open Search -->
<link rel="search" href="/open-search.xml" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Search Title">
<!-- Feeds -->
<link rel="alternate" href="https://feeds.feedburner.com/example" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS">
<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/feed.atom" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom 0.3">
<!-- Prefetching, preloading, prebrowsing -->
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//example.com/">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://www.example.com/">
<link rel="prefetch" href="https://www.example.com/">
<link rel="prerender" href="https://example.com/">
<link rel="subresource" href="styles.css">
<link rel="preload" href="image.png">
<!-- More info: https://css-tricks.com/prefetching-preloading-prebrowsing/ -->
Link: Not Recommended
Below are the link relations which are not recommended for use:<link rel="shortcut icon" href="path/to/favicon.ico">
from https://github.com/joshbuchea/HEAD