Class Exercise 6: Understanding Meta tags

As explained in exercise 4, meta tags are part of HTML code that gives information about a website it self.

I will be analysing meta tags for the following e-commerce website which sells IT components & parts: 

https://www.ebuyer.com/

<meta name="alexaVerifyID" content="XzWIu-5K1xgyo-tl1u0-q293Atw">
<meta name="description" content="Laptops, toners, ink, desktop PCs, tablet PCs, TVs, office supplies, electronics and tech for home and business users from Ebuyer.com">
<meta name="charset" content="utf-8">
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="ITHp4XYH7Yq7Sf6Rp8nvYR1qPwb-ALM3KxHkGpeAdnM">
<meta name="verify-v1" content="vHT3sASlMmqv0h2tz3IGe4sa8nOf92Fjk2c8oNFHZIs">
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="6A6027C8E2F339C0B99A5B94369A80A0">

As seen above, there are 7 meta tags in this website which we will analysing each one and its purpose.

meta name="alexaVerifyID"

Alexa is a web traffic information and analytics provider, it gives information about a certain website, this may show that the website is genuine and search engines use this as a factor to rank websites. However, Alexa Internet will be showing this May 2022.

The meta tag alexaverifyID is hoe websites owners claim their domain on Alexa internet (Wigmore, 2014).

meta name="description"

Description, which is a meta tag used to provide a short summary about a web page and it is displayed in search engine result page to give visitors an idea about the context that exists within the page (Moz, 2021).

meta name="charset"

The charset meta tag declares the character encoding which covers all the characters and symbols in the world (HTML meta charset Attribute, 2022).

meta name="google-site-verification"

According to Google (2021), It is used to verify ownership of a certain website as it helps with websites ranking. Moreover, verified owners have access to sensitive Google Search data for a website.

meta name="verify-v1"

Similarly, to the previous meta tag ("google-site-verification") which is used to verify a websites ownership in google; verify-v1 is used to verify a websites ownership in google web master tools (The verify-v1 tag, 2019).

meta name="msvalidate.01"

It is a verification process for Bing Webmaster tools similar to verify-v1 meta tag (Lee, 2021).

Reference List:

• Lee, M., 2021. What Does MSValidate.01 Error Message Mean? - ReviewPlan. [online] ReviewPlan. Available at: <https://www.reviewplan.com/msvalidate-01/> [Accessed 30 January 2022].

• Metatags.org. 2019. The verify-v1 tag has been replaced by the google-site-verification-tag. [online] Available at: <https://www.metatags.org/2009/10/metatags-news/google-meta-tag-verify-v1-has-been-replaced/> [Accessed 30 January 2022].

• Moz. 2021. Moz. [online] Available at: <https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description> [Accessed 30 January 2022].

• W3schools.com. 2022. HTML meta charset Attribute. [online] Available at: <https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_charset.asp> [Accessed 30 January 2022].

• Wigmore, I., 2014. What is Alexa Internet? - Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: <https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Alexa-Internet> [Accessed 30 January 2022].