What is Semantic Metadata?

As discussed in the article on "What is the Semantic Web ," there is a major change in how content is interpreted, organized and ranked coming down the pipeline. According to Tom Taque's statements in his keynote address of the 2009 Web 3.0 Conference this week, that change is already here.

"Google is now harvesting semantic metadata," Tague was quoted at InternetNews.com, "And I guarantee you they will use it to decide on rankings."

As semantic web technology begins to have a real world effect on search engine rankings, those who don't start learning about and implementing semantic metadata in their content stand to be left in the dust. The first step in getting on board is learning the answer to the question: what is semantic metadata?

To begin with, the web has been traditionally searched by the use of keyword phrases. The software performing these searches did not understand the meaning of the keywords; it just searched for content that had the given keyword in a certain range of keyword density. In the semantic web, content is also searched, indexed and ranked by content that is actually understood in its context. Instead of just recognizing a pattern of keywords, semantic technology actually understands what the content is, albeit it on a limited level.

The cues that set off the triggers of this type of page indexing are semantic metadata, most simply in the form of tags. Metadata tags have been around for a while, but they were treated similarly to keywords in that the software didn't understand what the tag meant, it was such a symbol. Semantic metadata tags are understood for what the tag symbolizes. As a result, this information can be intuitively organized and indexed automatically and accessing relevant information will become integrated in a way never thought possible. This contextual information the symbol, or tag, is the who, when, where, what, and how behind the symbol, and all of that contextual data is matched up semantic information from other queries that will process information without the need of a human interface. For more on this, consider visiting my introductory article on the semantic web and following the links for more in depth information provided below.

The important thing to understand is that content providers and publishers who fail to begin implementing basic semantic tagging technologies now face the possibility of being left in the dust and rolled right down the page ranks on search engine results. Although the big picture is possibly much greater than simply keeping up the search engines, understanding and implementing semantic metadata is an SEO technique that will may become an industry standard in a rapidly advancing future.

Sources:

trotsky.arc.nasa.gov/~mway/ROSES2005/keller2.ppt
http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/SeMMA2008
http://www.internetnews.com/search/article.php/3821231