Hi Danne

First of all, it's only the <title>tag here that is the required HTML element, when looking at <a href="http://validator.w3.org/" target="_blank">W3C Compliant Markups</a>.</p> <p>The <meta name="title"> tag is just meta data content, and different crawlers will use or not use that information as they see fit.  In the case of Google, it very seldom, if at all, ever uses this tag for its indexation purposes.</p> <p>Fast forward again to the <h1> tag, and its use is also <a href="http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title" target="_blank">W3C recommended</a>.</p> <p>So you can see the trend here - Google will look at the W3C elements and consider them for indexing more than the <meta name="title"> tag.  To put it bluntly, the <meta name="title"> is a waste of code.</p> <p>If you want a certain phrase to be indexed, considered, or to show up in the SERP, I would add it to your <title> tag and remove the <meta name="title"> altogether, to reduce the clutter and any chance of conflicting messages.</p></title>

Ok, so I've had a lot of discussion on this topic in the past but not recently. Pardon my bookmarks being a little old but they all still apply the same.

First, there is no meta value for title.  See the documentation here: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_meta.asp

The only values are:

• application-name
• author
• description
• generator
• keywords

There is a standard attribute for title (http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_standardattributes.asp) but specifies a bit of text more like a "tooltip" not a title tag.

The actual <title>tag <span data-mce-mark="1">defines the title of the document.  Title in a meta element defines the title of the meta element. In other words, no it has virtually no effect.</span></span></p> <p><span data-mce-mark="1"><span data-mce-mark="1">Supporting SEO docs:</span></span></p> <p>http://moz.com/community/q/title-vs-meta-title<br />http://forums.seochat.com/web-design-coding-programming-11/should-i-use-title-meta-title-460889.html<br />http://www.raisemyrank.com/articles/meta-title.htm<br />http://themeaningofweb.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/difference-between-and-nametitle-tags.html</p> <p> </p></title>

Ha, you got it done while I was still typing. Good, thorough answer.