# Meta In Body > Use when auditing HTML document structure. Applies to any page where meta tags (noindex, canonical-url, description, viewport, OG tags) may have been injected into the body by CMS plugins, widgets, or JavaScript rendering. - Skill: `thedaviddias/meta-in-body` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add thedaviddias/meta-in-body` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thedaviddias/meta-in-body/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Web & Frontend - Author: thedaviddias (https://skillmd.com/u/thedaviddias) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thedaviddias/meta-in-body --- # Meta Tags in Body Meta tags placed in the document body are ignored by search engines and most browsers—directives like noindex or canonical-url are silently ineffective, causing pages to be indexed or de-indexed unexpectedly. ## Quick Reference - All tags must appear inside , never inside - Browsers may ignore or move misplaced meta tags, making them ineffective - Crawlers like Googlebot only process meta tags found in - Validate with HTML validator or inspect parsed DOM to confirm placement ## Check Parse the HTML and check whether any elements appear outside —i.e., inside or after the closing tag. Flag each misplaced tag by name/property. ## Fix Move all tags into the section before . If they are injected by a script after the DOM is built, refactor the injection to target document.head instead of document.body. ## Explain Meta tags are document-level metadata and must live in . When placed in , they fall outside the metadata model of the document—search engines and browsers do not honour them, so directives like noindex or canonical-url will have no effect. ## Code Review Parse the rendered HTML and check the DOM structure. Find all elements. For each one, traverse up the parent chain — if any ancestor is or if the element appears after in the source, flag it. Pay special attention to: meta name='robots', meta name='description', meta property='og:*', and link rel='canonical' placed in body. --- For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance, see `references/rule.md`. Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/meta-in-body