meta element
compound.compound. a piece of code in a website's background that gives information about the page. It tells search engines and browsers things like the page description, keywords, or who wrote it.
compound. an HTML tag placed within the head section of a document to provide structured metadata about the webpage. It conveys information such as character encoding, page descriptions, and indexing instructions to browsers and search engine crawlers.
The developer added a meta element to improve the site's search ranking.
Every professional webpage should include a meta element for the viewport to ensure the site displays correctly on mobile devices.
While invisible to the end user, the meta element plays a critical role in search engine optimization by providing concise summaries that appear in search results.
Formed from the prefix meta-, derived from the Greek for 'beyond' or 'after', and the noun element. The term follows the established naming convention for structural components within the HyperText Markup Language.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Usually appears within the <head> section of an HTML document; often referred to simply as a 'meta tag' in casual technical contexts.
Last updated July 22, 2026