Meaning of Rel atttibute

Question

I found a strange a href in a webpage. It looks like

<a href=... rel="servername.com|6d63402c" ...other properties... ></a>

What does cryptic |6d63402c mean ? Is it a bitwise OR operation or just a string?

The document contains different links with different rels in this style.

See: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/document-metadata.html#attr-link-rel — Josh Crozier, Nov 07 '13 at 18:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 08 '13 at 18:42

The rel attribute specifies the link relationship type.

In HTML5 you may only use rel values that

are defined in the HTML5 specification, or
are registered in the Microformats wiki page existing rel values: HTML5 link type extensions.

As the value servername.com|6d63402c is not defined/registered, the page uses invalid markup.

As to what this specific value does: we can’t know (well, because it is not defined/registered). It’s probably some internal or third-party script that makes use of it. They should better use the data-* attribute instead of misusing rel.

James A Mohler · Answer 2 · 2013-11-07T19:29:45.693

1

Per the tag wiki: The rel attribute is used in HTML elements to specify the relationship and connection between the current document and the linked document.

Sources: W3C (link)

Source: W3Schools (link)

edited Nov 07 '13 at 19:29

answered Nov 07 '13 at 18:50

James A Mohler

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Meaning of Rel atttibute

2 Answers2

Linked