Semantic Web and SEO
The Semantic Web is a (currently theoretical) future state of the World Wide Web where information is machine-processable, rather than just machine-renderable for human viewing. Software will then be able to better find, organise and merge the data as it will have more "understanding" of the meaning of the data.
For example, if I go to a web page about a particular conference, my calendar software would be able to interpret the web page to extract the date, time and location of the conference. This may then allow it to show me available flights for the conference or transfer the data directly to my car's GPS system. This is a simple example, but demonstrates the power The Semantic Web could provide.
The are many different technologies which have been proposed to describe this "meaning" to computers including: Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), Web Ontology Language (OWL (sic)), XML and many more. The discussion of these is beyond the scope of this article.
How could The Semantic Web effect search?
The Semantic Web will allow search engines to be much more intelligent and give answers to more general queries. For example, rather then searching for "Florida Holidays", I may be able to search for "Sunny holiday destinations that are fun for kids in America". Most humans would be able to give Florida as a possible answer to this query. However, for a computer to come to the same conclusion it must "understand" information much better than it currently can. A search engine needs to know that Florida is a sunny place, that is it good for kids and that it is in America. Thus, significant amounts of AI technology will also need to be developed.
How will this change SEO?
It is hard to say how The Semantic Web will change SEO, as the technology has not really developed into a useable state yet. However, if webmasters are required to label the meanings of the items on their web pages then their may be large amounts of spam annotations.
No matter how The Semantic Web changes the WWW, it likely that the fundamentals of SEO will still remain relevant for a long time. They may even become more important, because as search engines understand more about your content and the links to your content they will be better equip to judge the quality of those links.
Related Tags: seo, internet, web design, development, search engine, semantic web, ai
Michael Hawthornthwaite works at Acid Computer Services (Manchester) offering bespoke database software development, website development and web design in Manchester and across the UK . Michael is a software designer and specializes in internet technologies and website usability.
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