The Meta tag in html in effect refers to one which is used by different search engines so as to allow them to list your different site in their indexes in a more accurate fashion. You need to note that it is not a necessary tag when creating your various web pages. Hence you will find that a number of pages don't employ this tag at all.
A Meta element is the term given to the different HTML elements which are used in order to provide structured metadata concerning a web page. These elements need to be placed in your head section of a given HTML document, as tags.
They have gaining importance in the areas of marketing research which are called search engine optimization (SEO). In this, alternative methods are investigated to give a user's site a better ranking when it comes to search engines.