diff --git a/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.html b/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.html
index 5a3124db1..e7c01e20b 100644
--- a/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.html
+++ b/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.html
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
 
 <script type="text/x-red" data-help-name="html">
     <p>Extracts elements from an html document held in <code>msg.payload</code> using a selector.</p>
+    <p>If left blank the selector may be set dynamically by passing in <code>msg.select</code> along with the <code>msg.payload</code>.
     <p>The selector uses <a href=="https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio/blob/master/Readme.md" target="_new">Cheerio</a>
      which uses the <a href="https://github.com/fb55/CSSselect#user-content-supported-selectors" target="_new">CSS selector</a> syntax.</p>
     <p>The result can be either a single message with a payload containing an array of the matched elements, or multiple
diff --git a/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.js b/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.js
index 30cf30f0c..d9447e853 100644
--- a/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.js
+++ b/nodes/core/parsers/70-HTML.js
@@ -20,16 +20,18 @@ module.exports = function(RED) {
 
     function CheerioNode(n) {
         RED.nodes.createNode(this,n);
-        this.tag = n.tag || "h1";
+        this.tag = n.tag;
         this.ret = n.ret || "html";
         this.as = n.as || "single";
         var node = this;
         this.on("input", function(msg) {
             if (msg.hasOwnProperty("payload")) {
+                var tag = node.tag;
+                if (msg.hasOwnProperty("select")) { tag = node.tag || msg.select; }
                 try {
                     var $ = cheerio.load(msg.payload);
                     var pay = [];
-                    $(node.tag).each(function() {
+                    $(tag).each(function() {
                         if (node.as === "multi") {
                             var pay2 = null;
                             if (node.ret === "html") { pay2 = cheerio.load($(this).html().trim()).xml(); }