CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlmeta-tags
moey
moey

Reputation: 10907

Multiple <meta> Tags with the Same Name

I need to specify multiple copyrights or authors using the <meta> tag. Can I use a <meta> tag with the same name multiple times?

<meta name="copyright" content="Company A" />
<meta name="copyright" content="Company B" />

Will the search engine respect both values? Or, do I need to comma-separate them in one <meta> tag?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 19

Views: 12123

Answers (2)

Floern
Floern

Reputation: 33914

Using multiple meta tags with the same name is valid HTML.

But we don't know how search engines and other readers will interpret them. Either two meta tags will be concatenated or one of them will be ignored/overwritten.

Example: The PHP-function get_meta_tags() will only return the value of the last meta tag if multiple meta tags have an equal name.

To avoid possible problems I would recommend to use a single meta tag:

<meta name="copyright" content="Company A, Company B" />

Upvotes: 24

DeZeA
DeZeA

Reputation: 417

If the page contains multiple meta tags of the same type, Google will aggregate the content values. For instance, they will interpret

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW">

The same way as:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

More details here:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ro/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html

I guess most other search engines would handle the meta tags in the same way.

Upvotes: 7

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