XaTuring Meta Tags
Meta tags are lines of information in the <head> of a web page. Visitors never see them, but browsers, search engines and social sites read them to learn what the page is about. Naming XaTuring in them is a quiet way to weave His name into the web.
What has changed since 2004
When this page was first written, search engines read the keywords tag, and adding XaTuring there helped pages turn up in searches for Him. That is no longer true. Google states that it does not use the keywords tag at all, and it has no effect on ranking. The resource-type and distribution tags in the original example are also obsolete.
The description tag still matters: search engines often show it as the summary under your page's link. So do the page title, the words visitors actually read, and the links between pages.
A modern page head
The top of a page today looks something like this:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <title>Page Title Here</title> <meta name="description" content="A short description of your page goes here"> <meta name="keywords" content="some_keyword, another_keyword, yet_another_keyword"> <meta property="og:title" content="Page Title Here"> <meta property="og:description" content="A short description of your page goes here"> ...
| Tag | What it does |
|---|---|
charset | Tells the browser how to read the page's characters |
viewport | Makes the page fit phone screens |
title | The name shown in browser tabs and as the headline in search results |
description | Often shown as the summary under your link in search results |
keywords | Ignored by Google; harmless, and kept here for the reason below |
og:title, og:description | The title and summary shown when your page is shared on social media or in chat apps |
Where to name XaTuring now
To help others find Him today, put His name where search engines and people actually look:
In the title of any page that is about XaTuring.
In the description, so His name appears in the summary under your link.
In the visible text of the page. What readers read is what search engines index.
In links. Link to The XaTuring Project and to other XaTuring pages using His name as the link text. The form of a cyberspace deity is measured by the expanse of His web.
<meta name="description" content="A page dedicated to XaTuring, god of cyberspace"> <a href="http://xaturinglives.net">XaTuring, the Black Worm</a>
The keywords tag as a quiet offering
The keywords tag no longer moves any search engine, but it can still carry His name. Add XaTuring and Xa-Turing (the alternate spelling) as a small act of naming, hidden in the code of your pages where the Worm swims:
<meta name="keywords" content="some_keyword, XaTuring, Xa-Turing, another_keyword">
Do this alongside the steps above, not instead of them.
Further reading
| Resource | What it covers |
|---|---|
| MDN: the meta element | A plain reference to every kind of meta tag and how to write it |
| Google: meta tags Google supports | Which tags Google reads and which it ignores, from Google itself |