Revision 1035982 of <meta>

<div>{{HTMLRef}}</div>

<p>The <strong>HTML <code>&lt;meta&gt;</code> element</strong><em> </em>represents any metadata information that cannot be represented by one of the other HTML meta-related elements ({{HTMLElement("base")}}, {{HTMLElement("link")}}, {{HTMLElement("script")}}, {{HTMLElement("style")}} or {{HTMLElement("title")}}).</p>

<p>Depending on the attributes set, the kind of metadata can be one of the following:</p>

<ul>
 <li>If {{htmlattrxref("name", "meta")}} is set, it is&nbsp;<em>document-level</em> <em>metadata</em>, applying to the whole page.</li>
 <li>If {{htmlattrxref("http-equiv", "meta")}} is set, it is a&nbsp;<em>pragma directive</em>, i.e. information normally given by the web server about how the web page should be served.</li>
 <li>If {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} is set, it is a&nbsp;<em>charset declaration</em>, i.e. the charset used for the serialized form of the webpage.</li>
 <li>If {{htmlattrxref("itemprop", "meta")}} is set, it is <em>user-defined metadata</em>, transparent for the user-agent as the semantics of the metadata is user-specific. {{experimental_inline}}</li>
</ul>

<table class="properties">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th><a href="/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Content_categories">Content categories</a></th>
   <td>Metadata content. If the {{htmlattrxref("itemprop", "meta")}} attribute is present: <a href="/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Content_categories#Flow_content" title="HTML/Content categories#Flow content">flow content</a>, <a href="/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Content_categories#Phrasing_content" title="HTML/Content categories#Phrasing content">phrasing content</a>.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th>Permitted content</th>
   <td>None, it is an {{Glossary("empty element")}}.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th>Tag omission</th>
   <td>As it is a void element, the start tag must be present and the end tag must not be present</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th>Permitted parent elements</th>
   <td><code>&lt;meta charset&gt;</code>, <code>&lt;meta http-equiv&gt;</code>: a {{HTMLElement("head")}} element. If the {{htmlattrxref("http-equiv", "meta")}} is not an encoding declaration, it can also be inside a {{HTMLElement("noscript")}} element, itself inside a {{HTMLElement("head")}} element.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <th>DOM interface</th>
   <td>{{domxref("HTMLMetaElement")}}</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Attributes">Attributes</h2>

<p>This element includes the&nbsp;<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_attributes" title="HTML/Global attributes">global attributes</a>.</p>

<p>Note that the global {{htmlattrxref("name", "meta")}} has a specific semantic in the {{HTMLElement("meta")}} element and that the {{htmlattrxref("itemprop", "meta")}} must not be set when one of the {{htmlattrxref("name", "meta")}}, {{htmlattrxref("http-equiv", "meta")}} or {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} is already used.</p>

<dl>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("charset")}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute declares the character encoding used of the page. It can be locally overridden using the <strong>lang</strong> attribute on any element. This attribute is a literal string and must be one of the <em>preferred MIME names</em> for a character encoding as <a class="external" href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets" title="https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets">defined by the IANA</a>. Though the standard doesn't request a specific character encoding, it gives some recommendations:
 <ul>
  <li>Authors are encouraged to use UTF-8.</li>
  <li>Authors should not use ASCII-incompatible encodings (i.e. those that don't map the 8-bit code points 0x20 to 0x7E to the Unicode 0x0020 to 0x007E code points) as these represent a security risk: browsers not supporting them may interpret benign content as HTML&nbsp;Elements. This is the case of at least the following charsets: JIS_C6226-1983, JIS_X0212-1990, HZ-GB-2312, JOHAB, the ISO-2022 family, and the EBCDIC family.</li>
  <li>Authors must not use CESU-8, UTF-7, BOCU-1 and SCSU, also falling in that category and not intended to be used on the web. Cross-scripting attacks with some of these encodings have been documented.</li>
  <li>Authors should not use UTF-32 because not all HTML5 encoding algorithms can distinguish it from UTF-16.</li>
 </ul>

 <div class="note"><strong>Notes:</strong>

 <ul>
  <li>The declared character set must match the one of the page. There is no valid reason to declare an inaccurate character set.</li>
  <li>This {{HTMLElement("meta")}} element must be inside the {{HTMLElement("head")}} element and <strong>within the 512 first bytes</strong> of the page, as some browsers only look at these first bytes before choosing a character set for the page.</li>
  <li>This {{HTMLElement("meta")}} element is only a part of the <a href="https://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/parsing.html#encoding-sniffing-algorithm" title="Algorithm charset page">algorithm to determine the character set</a> of a page that browsers apply. The HTTP&nbsp;Content-Type header and any BOM&nbsp;elements have precedence over this element.</li>
  <li>It is good practice, and strongly recommended, to define the character set using this attribute. If no character set is defined for a page, several cross-scripting techniques may be able to harm the page user, such as the <a class="external" href="https://code.google.com/p/doctype-mirror/wiki/ArticleUtf7" title="https://code.google.com/p/doctype/wiki/ArticleUtf7">UTF-7&nbsp;fallback cross-scripting technique</a>. Always setting this meta will protect against these risks.</li>
  <li>This {{HTMLElement("meta")}} element is a synonym for the pre-HTML5 <code>&lt;meta&nbsp;http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;&nbsp;charset=<em>IANAcharset</em>"&gt; </code>where <em><code>IANAcharset</code> </em>corresponds of the value of the equivalent {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} attribute. This syntax is still allowed, although obsolete and no longer recommended.</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
 </dd>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("content")}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute gives the value associated with the {{htmlattrxref("http-equiv", "meta")}} or {{htmlattrxref("name", "meta")}} attribute, depending of the context.</dd>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("http-equiv")}}</dt>
 <dd>This enumerated attribute defines the pragma that can alter servers and user-agents behavior. The value of the pragma is defined using the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} and can be one of the following:
 <dl>
  <dt><code>"content-language"</code> {{obsolete_inline}}</dt>
  <dd>This pragma defines the default language of the page.
  <div class="note">Do not use this pragma, as it is obsolete. Use the global <code>lang</code> attribute on the {{HTMLElement("html")}} element instead.</div>
  </dd>
  <dt><code>"Content-Security-Policy"</code></dt>
  <dd>This value allows web site administrators to define <a href="/en-US/docs/Web/Security/CSP/CSP_policy_directives">content policies</a> for served resources. With a few exceptions, policies mostly involve specifiying server origins and script endpoints. This helps guard against cross-site scripting attacks.</dd>
  <dt><code>"content-type"</code> {{obsolete_inline}}</dt>
  <dd>This attribute defines the <a href="/en-US/docs/MIME" title="MIME">MIME type</a> of the document, eventually followed by its character set. It follows the same syntax as the HTTP <code>content-type</code> entity-header field, but as it is inside an HTML Element, most values are not possible. Therefore the valid syntax for its content is the literal string '<code>text/html</code>' eventually followed by a character set with the following syntax:'<code>; charset=</code><em><code>IANAcharset</code></em>' where <code>IANAcharset</code> is the <em>preferred MIME name</em> for a character set as <a class="external" href="https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets" title="https://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets">defined by the IANA.</a>
  <div class="note"><strong>Usage note:</strong>
  <ul>
   <li>Do not use this pragma as it is obsolete. Use the {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} attribute on the {{HTMLElement("meta")}} element instead.</li>
   <li>As the {{HTMLElement("meta")}} may not be used to change the type of a document in an XHTML document, or in an HTML5 document following the XHTML syntax, never set MIME&nbsp;type to an XHTML MIME type that way. It would be incorrect.</li>
   <li>Only an HTML document can use the content-type, so most of it is redundant: that's why it has been obsoleted and replaced by the {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} attribute.</li>
  </ul>
  </div>
  </dd>
  <dt><code>"default-style"</code></dt>
  <dd>This pragma specifies the preferred stylesheet to be used on the page. The {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} attribute must contain the <strong>title</strong>&nbsp;of a {{HTMLElement("link")}} element whose {{htmlattrxref("href", "link")}} attribute links to a CSS stylesheet, or the <strong>title</strong>&nbsp;of a {{HTMLElement("style")}} element which contains a <a href="/en-US/docs/Web/CSS" title="CSS">CSS</a> stylesheet.</dd>
  <dt><code>"refresh"</code></dt>
  <dd>This pragma specifies:
  <ul>
   <li>the number of seconds until the page should be reloaded, if the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} attribute contains only a positive integer number;</li>
   <li>the number of seconds until the page should be redirected to another, if the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} attribute contains a positive integer number followed by the string '<code>;url=</code>' and a valid URL.</li>
  </ul>
  </dd>
  <dt><code>"set-cookie"</code> {{obsolete_inline}}</dt>
  <dd>This pragma defines a <a href="/en-US/docs/cookie" title="cookie">cookie</a> for the page. Its content must follows the syntax defines in the <a class="external" href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-14" title="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-14">IETF HTTP Cookie Specification</a>.
  <div class="note"><strong>Note:</strong> Do not use this pragma as it is obsolete. Use the HTTP header set-cookie instead.</div>
  </dd>
 </dl>
 </dd>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("name")}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute defines the name of document-level metadata. It should not be set if one of the attributes {{htmlattrxref("itemprop", "meta")}}, {{htmlattrxref("http-equiv", "meta")}} or {{htmlattrxref("charset", "meta")}} is also set.<br />
 This document-level metadata name is associated with a value, contained by the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} attribute. The possible values for the name element are, with their associated value, stored via the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} attribute:
 <ul>
  <li><code>application-name</code>, defining the name of the web application running in the webpage;
   <div class="note"><strong>Note:</strong>
   <ul>
    <li>Browsers may use this to identify the application. It is different from the {{HTMLElement("title")}} element, which usually consist of the application name but may also contain specific information like the document name or a status;</li>
    <li>Simple webpages shouldn't define the application-name meta.</li>
   </ul>
   </div>
  </li>
  <li><code>author</code>, defining, in a free format, the name of the author of the document;</li>
  <li><code>description</code>, containing a short and accurate summary of the content of the page. Several browsers, among them Firefox and Opera, use this meta as the default description of the page when bookmarked;</li>
  <li><code>generator</code>, containing, in a free format, the identifier to the software that generated the page;</li>
  <li><code>keywords</code>, containing, as strings separated by commas, relevant words associated with the content of the page;</li>
  <li><code>referrer</code> {{experimental_inline}} controlling the content of the HTTP <code>Referer</code> HTTP header attached to any request sent from this document:
   <table class="standard-table">
    <caption>Values for the content of &lt;meta name="referrer"&gt;</caption>
    <thead>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
     <tr>
      <td><code>no-referrer</code></td>
      <td>Do not send a HTTP <code>Referer</code> header.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>origin</code></td>
      <td>Send the <a href="/en-US/docs/Glossary/Origin">origin</a> of the document.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>no-referrer-when-downgrade</code></td>
      <td>Send the <a href="/en-US/docs/Glossary/Origin">origin</a> as referrer to a-priori as-much-secure destination (https-&gt;https), but doesn't send a referrer to a less secure destination (https-&gt;http). This is the default behavior.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>origin-when-crossorigin</code></td>
      <td>Send a full URL (stripped from parameters) when performing a same-origin request, but only send the <a href="/en-US/docs/Glossary/Origin">origin</a> of the document for other cases.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>unsafe-URL</code></td>
      <td>Send a full URL (stripped from parameters) when perfoming a a same-origin or cross-origin request.</td>
     </tr>
    </tbody>
   </table>

   <div class="note">
   <p><strong>Note:&nbsp;</strong>Some browsers support keywords <code>always</code>, <code>default</code>, and <code>never</code> for referrer. These values are deprecated.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
   </div>

   <div class="note">
   <div class="notes"><strong>Note:</strong> Dynamically inserting <code>&lt;meta name="referrer"&gt;</code> (by document.write or appendChild) create a non-determinism when it comes to sending referrers or not. Note also that when several conflicting policies are defined, the No-referrer policy is applied.</div>
   </div>
  </li>
 </ul>

 <p>The attribute may also have a value taken from the extended list defined on <a class="external" href="https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions" title="https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/MetaExtensions">WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page</a>. Although none has been formally accepted yet, a few commonly used names are among the proposals:</p>

 <ul>
  <li><code>creator</code>, defining, in a free format, the name of the creator of the document. Note that it can be the name of the institution. If there are more than one, several {{HTMLElement("meta")}} elements should be used;</li>
  <li><code>googlebot</code>, which is a synonym of <code>robots</code>, but is only followed by Googlebot, the indexing crawler for Google;</li>
  <li><code>publisher</code>, defining, in a free format, the name of the publisher of the document. Note that it can be the name of the institution;</li>
  <li><code>robots</code>, defining the behavior that cooperative crawlers should have with the page. It is a comma-separated list of values taken in the following list:
   <table class="standard-table">
    <caption>Values for the content of &lt;meta name="robots"&gt;</caption>
    <thead>
     <tr>
      <th scope="col">Value</th>
      <th scope="col">Description</th>
      <th scope="col">Used by</th>
     </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
     <tr>
      <td><code>index</code></td>
      <td>Allows the robot to index the page</td>
      <td>All</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>noindex</code></td>
      <td>Prevents the robot from indexing the page</td>
      <td>All</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>follow</code></td>
      <td>Allows the robot to follow the links on the page</td>
      <td>All</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>nofollow</code></td>
      <td>Prevents the robot from following the links on the page</td>
      <td>All</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>noodp</code></td>
      <td>Prevents the usage of the <a class="external" href="https://www.dmoz.org/" title="https://www.dmoz.org/">Open Directory Project</a> description, if any, as the description of the page in the search engine results page</td>
      <td>
       <p><a class="external" href="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812" title="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812">Google</a>, <a class="external" href="https://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/indexing-11.html;_ylt=Arh3LHnisvRMPJKzQqmJ97JYqCN4" title="https://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/indexing-11.html;_ylt=Arh3LHnisvRMPJKzQqmJ97JYqCN4">Yahoo</a>, <a class="external" href="https://www.bing.com/toolbox/blogs/webmaster/archive/2008/06/03/robots-exclusion-protocol-joining-together-to-provide-better-documentation.aspx" title="https://www.bing.com/toolbox/blogs/webmaster/archive/2008/06/03/robots-exclusion-protocol-joining-together-to-provide-better-documentation.aspx">Bing</a></p>
      </td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>noarchive</code></td>
      <td>Prevents the search engine from caching the content of the page</td>
      <td><a class="external" href="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812" title="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812">Google</a>, <a class="external" href="https://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/basics-10.html;_ylt=Aszma_Ly8TfhL7mn_LGWn5RYqCN4" title="https://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/basics-10.html;_ylt=Aszma_Ly8TfhL7mn_LGWn5RYqCN4">Yahoo</a></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>nosnippet</code></td>
      <td>Prevents the display of any description of the page in the search engine results page</td>
      <td><a class="external" href="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35304" title="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35304">Google</a></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>noimageindex</code></td>
      <td>Prevents this page from appearing as the referring page of an indexed image</td>
      <td><a class="external" href="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812" title="https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=79812">Google</a></td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>nocache</code></td>
      <td>Synonym of <code>noarchive</code></td>
      <td><a class="external" href="https://www.bing.com/toolbox/blogs/webmaster/archive/2008/06/03/robots-exclusion-protocol-joining-together-to-provide-better-documentation.aspx" title="https://www.bing.com/toolbox/blogs/webmaster/archive/2008/06/03/robots-exclusion-protocol-joining-together-to-provide-better-documentation.aspx">Bing</a></td>
     </tr>
    </tbody>
   </table>

   <div class="note"><strong>Notes:</strong>

   <ul>
    <li>Only cooperative robots will follow the rules defined by the robots name. Do not expect to keep e-mail harvesters at bay with this.</li>
    <li>The robot still needs to access the page in order to read the meta value. If you want to keep them at bay, for example to prevent bandwidth consumption, use a <em><a href="/en-US/docs/Robot_Exclusion_Protocol" title="Robot Exclusion Protocol">robots.txt</a></em> file instead (or in complement).</li>
    <li>If you want to remove the page of an index, changing the meta to <code>noindex</code> will work, but only when the robot visit the page again. Be sure not to prevent such visits, via the <em>robots.txt</em> file for example. Some search engines have developers tools, allowing a quick removal of some page.</li>
    <li>Some possible values are mutually exclusive, like using <code>index</code> and <code>noindex</code>, or <code>follow</code> and <code>nofollow</code>, at the same time. In these cases the behavior of the robot is undefined, and may vary from one to the other. So avoid these cases.</li>
    <li>Some search engine crawler robots, like those of Google, Yahoo Search or Bing, support the same values on an HTTP directive, <code>X-Robot-Tags</code>: this allows them to use these pragma on non-HTML documents, like images.</li>
   </ul>
   </div>
  </li>
  <li><code>slurp</code>, which is a synonym of <code>robots</code>, but is only followed by Slurp, the indexing crawler for Yahoo Search;</li>
 </ul>

 <p>Finally a few names are in common use, though not in progress of being standardized:</p>

 <ul>
  <li><code>viewport</code>, which gives hints about the size of the initial size of the {{glossary("viewport")}}. This pragma is used by several mobile devices only.

   <table class="fullwidth-table">
    <caption>Values for the content of <code>&lt;meta name="viewport"&gt;</code></caption>
    <thead>
     <tr>
      <th scope="col">Value</th>
      <th scope="col">Possible values</th>
      <th scope="col">Description</th>
     </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
     <tr>
      <td><code>width</code></td>
      <td>a positive integer number or the literal <code>device-width</code></td>
      <td>defines the width, in pixels, of the viewport</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>height</code></td>
      <td>a positive integer number or the literal <code>device-height</code></td>
      <td>defines the height, in pixels, of the viewport</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>initial-scale</code></td>
      <td>a positive number between <code>0.0</code> and <code>10.0</code></td>
      <td>defines the ratio between the device width (<code>device-width</code> in portrait mode or <code>device-height</code> in landscape mode) and the viewport size.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>maximum-scale</code></td>
      <td>a positive number between <code>0.0</code> and <code>10.0</code></td>
      <td>defines the maximum value of the zoom; it must be greater or equal to the <code>minimum-scale</code> or the behavior is indeterminate.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>minimum-scale</code></td>
      <td>a positive number between <code>0.0</code> and <code>10.0</code></td>
      <td>defines the minimum value of the zoom; it must be smaller or equal to the <code>maximum-scale</code> or the behavior is indeterminate.</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
      <td><code>user-scalable</code></td>
      <td>a boolean value (<code>yes</code> or <code>no</code>)</td>
      <td>If set to <code>no</code>, the user is not able to zoom in the webpage. Default value is <code>yes</code>.</td>
     </tr>
    </tbody>
   </table>

   <table class="standard-table">
    <thead>
     <tr>
      <th scope="col">Specification</th>
      <th scope="col">Status</th>
      <th scope="col">Comment</th>
     </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
     <tr>
      <td>{{SpecName('CSS3 Device', '#viewport-meta', '&lt;meta name="viewport"&gt;')}}</td>
      <td>{{Spec2('CSS3 Device')}}</td>
      <td>Non-normatively describes the Viewport META element</td>
     </tr>
    </tbody>
   </table>

   <div>See also: {{cssxref("@viewport")}}</div>

   <div class="note"><strong>Notes:</strong>

   <ul>
    <li>Though not standardized, this attribute is used by different mobile browsers like Safari Mobile, Firefox for Mobile or Opera Mobile.</li>
    <li>The default values may change from one device, and browser, to another.</li>
    <li>To learn about this pragma in Firefox for Mobile, see <a href="/en-US/docs/Mobile/Viewport_meta_tag" title="Mobile/Viewport meta tag">this article</a>.</li>
   </ul>
   </div>
  </li>
 </ul>
 </dd>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("scheme")}} {{obsolete_inline}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute defines the scheme in which the metadata is described. A scheme is a context leading to the correct interpretations of the {{htmlattrxref("content", "meta")}} value, like a format.
 <div class="note"><strong>Notes:</strong> Do not use this attribute as it is obsolete. There is no replacement for it as there was no real usage for it. Omit it altogether.</div>
 </dd>
</dl>

<h2 id="Examples">Examples</h2>

<pre class="brush: html">
&lt;!-- In HTML5 --&gt;
&lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;

&lt;!-- Defining the charset in HTML4 --&gt; 
&lt;!-- Note: This is invalid in HTML5 --&gt;
&lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"&gt;

&lt;!-- Redirect page after 3 seconds --&gt;
&lt;meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url=https://www.mozilla.org/"&gt;

</pre>

<h2 id="Specifications" name="Specifications">Specifications</h2>

<table class="standard-table">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th scope="col">Specification</th>
   <th scope="col">Status</th>
   <th scope="col">Comment</th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('Referrer Policy', '#referrer-policy-delivery-meta', '&lt;meta name="referrer"&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('Referrer Policy')}}</td>
   <td>Defines values and semantics of <code>&lt;meta name="referrer"&gt;</code>.</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML WHATWG', 'semantics.html#the-meta-element', '&lt;meta&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML WHATWG')}}</td>
   <td>Added <code>itemprop</code> attribute</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML5 W3C', 'document-metadata.html#the-meta-element', '&lt;meta&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML5 W3C')}}</td>
   <td>Added <code>charset</code> attribute</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML4.01', 'struct/global.html#h-7.4.4.2', '&lt;meta&gt;')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML4.01')}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Browser_compatibility">Browser compatibility</h2>

<p>{{CompatibilityTable}}</p>

<div id="compat-desktop">
<table class="compat-table">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th>Feature</th>
   <th>Chrome</th>
   <th>Firefox (Gecko)</th>
   <th>Internet Explorer</th>
   <th>Opera</th>
   <th>Safari</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Basic support</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatGeckoDesktop("1.0")}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td><code>name="referrer"</code></td>
   <td>{{CompatChrome("17")}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatGeckoDesktop("36.0")}} [1]</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Constrained to values listed under referrer (as specified in the spec.)</td>
   <td>{{CompatChrome("46.0")}}</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
   <td>&nbsp;</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
</div>

<div id="compat-mobile">
<table class="compat-table">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <th>Feature</th>
   <th>Android</th>
   <th>Android Webview</th>
   <th>Firefox Mobile (Gecko)</th>
   <th>IE Mobile</th>
   <th>Opera Mobile</th>
   <th>Safari Mobile</th>
   <th>Chrome for Android</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Basic support</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatGeckoMobile("1.0")}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td><code>name="referrer"</code></td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatGeckoMobile("36.0")}} [1]</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatVersionUnknown}}</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Constrained to values listed under referrer (as specified in the spec.)</td>
   <td>{{CompatNo}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatChrome("46.0")}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatUnknown}}</td>
   <td>{{CompatChrome("46.0")}}</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
</div>

<p>[1] The <code>referrer</code> value wasn't taken into account when navigation was happening via the context menu or middle click until Firefox 39.</p>

<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>

<ul>
 <li>The other elements containing metadata: {{HTMLElement("base")}}, {{HTMLElement("head")}}, {{HTMLElement("link")}}, {{HTMLElement("style")}},{{HTMLElement("title")}}.</li>
</ul>