Meta tags makes it easier for the web page owner to specify keywords and concepts that must be taken into consideration while a page is indexed.

Meta tags are useful in cases where the words on the page contain more than on meaning.

In this case, meta tags efficiently guide the search engine in selecting the best suited word among several possible meanings for these words.

However, too much dependence on meta tags may be dangerous. This is because a careless web page owner may include meta tags that are related to popular topics and doesn’t actually related to the contents of the page.
This can be avoided by spiders, when they correlate meta tags with page content. In this process of evaluation, they reject the meta tags that are not related to the words on the page.

The web page owner actually wants to include meta tags so that these words show up as results of a search engine’s activities.

There are situation when the owner of a page is not keen on appearing on a major search engine and doesn’t even want the activity of a spider accessing the page.

For instance, a game that builds now, active pages each time sections of the page are displayed or new links are followed. In case, a web spider opens up one of these pages and starts following all of the links for new pages, The game may take the activity for a high speed human play by mistake and spin out of control.

Such situations can be avoided with the use of Robot exclusion protocol. The Protocol, present at the beginning of a web page in the meta tag section asks a spider to leave the page and stop indexing the words on the page. The protocol also prohibits the spider to follow the page links.

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