How to use " / > effectively

I'm confused on the "correct" way source text...

[Herrmann22]

Here's my question:

Let's say I have a line reading like this:

<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="widgets1, widgets2">

And the other other one I've been seeing:

<meta name="keywords" content="widgets1, widgets2" />

Notice anything different here? Look at the end of the source code. Also, the second code is using small letters. Now, is there any difference the way search engines would view this code regarding keywords, or any other subject using these two codes?

I want to make sure I index my source code properly so I don't get left behind when the spiders and robots see my new site.

Thanks!

Scott

[benihana]

what you describe is due to the differences between html and XHTML [w3.org]

i dont think it will make any difference to spiders at the moment. the tag used in the example is all but redundent anyway.

hth
ben

[g1smd]

Don't use the ending / in pure HTML documents as it can cause all sorts of problems.

Only use it in XHTML documents.

It never used to matter if tags used upper or lower case. In HTML 4.01 it is recommended to write all tags and attributes in lower case. For XHTML an XML it then becomes a requirement.

[martinibuster]

Don't use the ending / in pure HTML documents

Yeah, I was trying to figure out why askjeeves was hanging on me last week, so I ran their page through the w3c validator and it turns out that kind stuff may have been giving my browser all kinds of grief.

[lorax]

And just in case you don't already know this, the difference between HTML and XHTML (besides the idiosyncratic code) is the DOCTYPE declaration.