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Two common meta element attributes are:

<meta name="" content="">

and

<meta property="" content="">

what is the difference between meta name and meta property?

1 Answer 1

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The name attribute is the "usual" way for specifying metadata in HTML. It’s defined in the HTML5 spec.

The property attribute comes from RDFa.

RDFa 1.1 extends HTML5 so that it’s valid to use meta and link elements in the body, as long as they contain a property attribute.

You can use both ways, HTML5’s name and RDFa’s property, together on the same meta element.

Note that you might also see meta elements with an itemprop attribute. That would be from Microdata.

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12 Comments

Google is giving advice for duplicated meta tags. And its counting the property="og:dscription" and name="description" attributes as the same
Is it Frondor's argument true?
@PieterMoeyersons: Using viewport as value for the property attribute would mean something totally different from using it as value for the name property; it’s not that some browsers support it like that and some don’t (at least, it should not be), and browsers typically don’t use RDFa anyway (it’s for RDFa parsers, browser add-ons, etc.).
@sack: It’s allowed, yes, but if they have the same value, you could also use one meta element: <meta name="description" property="og:description" content="">
When I was using only name="og:image", LinkedIn would just get some random image from the page, sometimes even selected an icon. Now that I use both (name="image" property="og:image") it gets the right image.

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