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Re: Metadata

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From: Paul Collins
Date: Aug 7, 2007 5:30AM

Thanks for your reply Jukka, that was very interesting to hear your
thoughts. So, would not even the Keywords and description metatags
have any use anymore?

The main reason I had got into this is the site I am on currently
needs to meet Priority 2 of WCAG 1; hence the guideline:

13.2 Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites.

Can we observe this as obsolete? It is quite general and could be
interpreted many different ways.

> Dublin Core is used to some extent by some public sites, often with
> incorrect metadata (I've seen e.g. European Union webpages with Dublin
> Core metadata that claims that the document language is English, quite
> independently of the language actually used. I guess it's not difficult to
> figure out how such madness emerges.)

Yes, I can definitely see how that happens, the Dublin Core stuff I
did for a site a while back has not changed since I left and been
copied across to new pages and sections :)

I found it interesting that it hasn't really taken off, although I can
see why in most cases.

On 07/08/07, Jukka K. Korpela < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Paul Collins wrote:
>
> > I haven't had to do the Metadata side of things for a while and it's
> > time to bring myself up to scratch...
>
> Metadata for web pages is mostly irrelevant, both as regards to
> accessibility and in other ways. Some technical metadata like the
> document's character encoding is very essential of course, but usually not
> considered as metadata in discussions like this.
>
> > I wanted to first ask if someone could point me in the direction of a
> > resource that explains how to create good accessible Metadata. I am
> > guessing accessibility and SEO would go hand in hand with the correct
> > metadata, but a resource that speaks about both would be great.
>
> "Search Engine Optimization" (which is probably what you mean by "SEO") is
> primarily an expression for attempts at making money with technobabble.
> There is of course a lot we can do to help people to find our pages using
> search engines when they answer their questions, and there are good
> treatises on this, but they usually use different phrases (like "being
> search-engine friendly"). And they have little to do with metadata, except
> the <title> element (which is metadata, though not often regarded as
> that).
>
> The connection with search engine friendlyness and accessibility is mostly
> practical. To be search engine friendly, you need to be processable by
> software that basically analyzes your textual content only, in the order
> of its appearance in HTML source, and pays attention to some structural
> markup at most (generally ignoring all markup related to fonts, colors,
> etc.) and linearizes your tables. This tends to produce better
> accessibility, too.
>
> > Which leads me to my next question; does anybody on here use Dublin
> > Core metadata? I did last time I had to add metadata, but looking
> > around at other reputable sites, it doesn't seem like anyone else
> > does. Is Dublin Core not worth adding? Does Dublin core improve SEO,
> > or do you need to add seperate metadata for this?
>
> Dublin Core is used to some extent by some public sites, often with
> incorrect metadata (I've seen e.g. European Union webpages with Dublin
> Core metadata that claims that the document language is English, quite
> independently of the language actually used. I guess it's not difficult to
> figure out how such madness emerges.) But not much. There is no evidence
> of any general-purpose search engine, or any other software commonly used
> in the web context, actually paying the least attention to Dublin Core
> metadata. In a word, writing Dublin Core metadata for web pages is still
> an exercise in futility.
>
> --
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>
>