What Is the Description META Tag/Element? - XHTML 1.0 Tutorials - Document Structure and Head Level Tags

The description meta element is a special meta element that provides a short descript about the XHTML document. The description meta element must include the "name" attribute as, name="description". Here is an example:

<meta name="description" content="A collection of XHTML
tutorials on head, body and meta elements by FYIcenter" />

XHMTL browsers are usually ignoring the description meta element. But most search engines are using the information provided in the description meta element to show your page in the search result listing. So it is very important to code the description meta element properly in your XHTML documents following rules below:

• Do include the description meta element for every XHTML page.
• Do not write very long descriptions. They should be around 150 characters long.
• Do not include any special characters like & @, #, %, ...