Meta tags provide information about a webpage that is found in the HTML (hyper-text markup language) of a document. The HTML tells a web browser how to display text, images, and other forms of media on a webpage, while the meta tag tells search engines and web crawlers what is on the page. Simply put, the meta tag is a short synopsis of what is on the page so the search engine can rank the page, display snippets in search results, or ignore the meta tag entirely.