What does a meta tag generator produce?
A meta tag generator writes the small block of HTML that sits in a page's <head> and describes the page to browsers and search engines. This one takes a page title plus optional description, keywords, author and robots value, and returns a <title> element followed by matching <meta> tags, ready to paste into a template.
What each field becomes
The output always contains three lines: the title, the robots tag and a viewport tag. The other lines appear only when you fill in their fields.
| Field | Output | Always included? | What Google does with it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page title | <title>…</title> |
Yes | A main source for the title link in results |
| Meta description | <meta name="description"> |
Only if filled | Sometimes used for the snippet |
| Keywords | <meta name="keywords"> |
Only if filled | Ignored |
| Author | <meta name="author"> |
Only if filled | No documented use in Search |
| Robots | <meta name="robots"> |
Yes | Controls indexing and link following |
| (none) | <meta name="viewport"> |
Yes | Mobile rendering; counts as a mobile-friendly signal |
The Google column comes from its list of meta tags Google understands, which states plainly that the keywords tag "is not used by Google Search". The tool still offers the field because some internal search engines and CMS plugins read it, but it won't help you rank.
A worked example
With the title Sourdough Starter Guide: Feeding & Timing, a description that contains quoted text, the author Maya Chen, an empty keywords field and the default robots value, the generator returns:
<title>Sourdough Starter Guide: Feeding & Timing</title>
<meta name="description" content="How to feed a sourdough starter, what "ripe" looks like, and a 7-day schedule.">
<meta name="author" content="Maya Chen">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
Two details are visible here. The keywords line is missing because the field was blank. And special characters were escaped: the double quotes in the description became " so they can't end the content attribute early, and the & in the title became &. The tool escapes &, <, > and " in every field, in the <title> text as well as the attribute values, so a title such as Tips & Tricks or one containing </title> can't break the surrounding markup. Browsers and search engines decode the entities back to the original characters. Treat every field as plain text: typing & yourself gives &amp;. Leading or trailing spaces in each field are trimmed.
How to use it
- Type the page title into the main input. Without a title the tool returns nothing.
- Add a description that summarises this specific page. Optionally add author and keywords.
- Pick a robots value from the dropdown.
- Click Generate, then Copy, and paste the block inside your page's
<head>, replacing any existing title and duplicate tags. - After publishing, check the live page with the on-page SEO checker to confirm the title, description and robots tag are what the server actually sends.
Writing a title and description that get used
Google's title link guidance says there's no length limit on the <title> element, but long titles get truncated, so keep them concise. It also asks for a unique, descriptive title per page and warns against keyword stuffing and boilerplate titles that differ by one word across hundreds of pages. Put the brand at the start or end with a separator rather than repeating a long tagline.
Descriptions work the same way. According to Google's snippet documentation, there's no character limit and Google only sometimes uses the meta description, building most snippets from page content. It's more likely to use yours when it's an accurate, page-specific summary. Identical descriptions across a site, or descriptions that are just a list of keywords, tend to be ignored.
Picking a robots value
The dropdown offers four combinations:
- index, follow: the default behaviour. Including it has no effect, but it documents intent.
- noindex, follow: keep the page out of results while letting Google follow its links. Good for thank-you pages, internal search results and thin tag archives.
- index, nofollow: index the page but don't follow any links on it. Rarely the right choice; per-link
relvalues are usually better. - noindex, nofollow: keep the page out and ignore its links. Google's robots meta tag reference treats
noneas the same thing.
One trap catches people often: noindex only works if Google can crawl the page and read it. If the URL is also disallowed in robots.txt, the tag is never seen. Use the robots.txt generator for crawl rules and this tag for indexing rules, and don't apply both to the same URL.
What this generator leaves out
The output covers the basics only. It doesn't add a <meta charset> declaration, a canonical link, or social preview tags. For link previews on Facebook, LinkedIn and messaging apps, generate Open Graph tags with the Open Graph generator; for X, use the Twitter Card generator. It also doesn't check length, spelling or whether the description matches the page, so read the result once before shipping it.
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