Title: Parse.ly Page metadata tag setup
Author: joshua
Published: November 10, 2025
Last modified: November 12, 2025

---

 1. [Installation resources](https://docs.parse.ly/installation-resources/)
 2. [Parse.ly Integration](https://docs.parse.ly/installation-resources/parsely-integration/)
 3. [Metadata](https://docs.parse.ly/installation-resources/parsely-integration/metadata/)
 4. Parse.ly Page metadata tag setup

#  Parse.ly Page metadata tag setup

#### Legacy Documentation

This documentation refers to an earlier format of proprietary Parse.ly metadata.
While Parse.ly crawlers will continue to support this format, new projects should
instead use the recommended and standard [JSON-LD format](https://docs.parse.ly/metadata-jsonld/).

Specifying metadata information on your webpages is the second step of integrating
with Parse.ly. (Jump to [documentation about installing the tracking code](https://docs.parse.ly/tracking-code-setup/)
if you don’t have the tracker running yet!)

#### Note

Parse.ly’s crawlers don’t execute javascript, so regardless of which metadata format
you choose, the information must be accessible in the actual source of the page.
For more, check out our [detailed crawler information](https://docs.parse.ly/crawler/).

## Example

    ```lang-php
    <meta name='parsely-page'
      content='{"title": "Zipfu0027s Law of the Internet: Explaining Online Behavior",
        "link": "https://blog.parse.ly/post/57821746552",
        "image_url": "https://blog.parse.ly/inline_mra670hTvL1qz4rgp.png",
        "type": "post",
        "post_id": "57821746552",
        "pub_date": "2013-08-15T13:00:00Z",
        "section": "Programming",
        "authors": ["Alan Alexander Milne"],
        "tags": ["statistics","zipf","internet","behavior"]
    }'>
    ```

For the purposes of readability the value of the content attribute in the code above
is indented and attributes come each on a new line. This is not valid HTML and in
production environment the value of the content attribute should be all in a single
line.

## Field description

| Value | Description | 
| title | Post or page title (article headline). | 
| link | Specifies the Parse.ly canonical URL for post or page. For page groups, like galleries, it should always point to the main page. For accurate data, canonical urls specified in other metadata tags (such as <link rel=”canonical”> and <meta property=”og:url”> tags) must match, resolve, or redirect to this url. For more information, please refer to our documentation on shares integration. | 
| image_url | URL of the image associated with the post/page. | 
| type | Page type – “post”, “frontpage” or “sectionpage” | 
| post_id | String that uniquely identifies this post. Unless otherwise instructed by Parse.ly support, should be omitted in favor of link. | 
| pub_date | Publication date, as ISO 8601 UTC timezone string. | 
| section | Section the page belongs to (e.g. “Politics”). | 
| authors | List of post authors. | 
| tags | List of tags associated with this post. | 
| metadata | [Arbitrary data to attach to post. Must be a valid JSON string. See ](https://www.parse.ly/troubleshooting-faqs//api/custom-metadata)[documentation about custom metadata](https://docs.parse.ly/api-custom-metadata/). |

## Technical Caveats

**Escape single and double quotes in JSON item values**. Single quotes should be
replaced with the JSON unicode equivalent `u0027`. Double quotes should be escaped
with a backslash symbol like this: `"`.

**Values in parsely-page will appear literally inside Parse.ly Analytics.** String
values supplied here, specifically title, author, and section, will appear in Parse.
ly analytics _exactly_ as they are specified in the tag. As a result, make sure 
to use proper capitalization and specify the values as you expect them to appear.

**The parsely-page metadata tag cannot be loaded asynchronously**. The Parse.ly 
crawler will not execute JavaScript. It must be able to access the metadata tag 
from the results of a single GET request.

## Content behind paywalls

If you have content that is accessible only after logging into the system, you should
coordinate with Parse.ly support team to arrange for a special login account, only
accessible to our Crawler. The credentials for this account will only be used by
the Crawler and will not be shared with anyone else.

Last updated: November 12, 2025