Schema.org
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This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages. Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data.
Schema.org
I only wanted to track SemTech chatter but it seems all semantics-related tweet streams are discussing just one thing right now: Schema.org . So I apparently will have to build a #semtech filtering app, but I couldn't resist and had a close look at Schema.org, too. And just like everybody else, I'll join the fun of polluting the web with yet another opinion about its potential impact on the Semantic Web initiative and related efforts. The web, because the simple template-like instructions on schema.org will boost the amount of structured data, similar to Facebook's Open Graph Protocol . The search engine companies involved, because extracting (known) structures can be less expensive and more accurate than NLP and statistical analysis. Controlling the vocabulary also means being able to tailor it to semantic advertising needs, integrating the schema.org taxonomy with AdWords would make a lot of (business) sense.
Threat or Opportunity?
Full disclosure: I am the current Chair of the group at the World Wide Web Consortium that created RDFa. That said, all of this is my personal opinion – I am not speaking on behalf of the W3C or my company, Digital Bazaar. I am biased, but also have been around long enough to know when freedom of choice on the Web is being threatened. Some of you may have heard that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have just released a new uber-vocabulary for the Web. As the site explains, if you use schema.org, you will get a better looking search listing on all of the search listings for Bing, Google and Yahoo. While this may sound good on the surface, it is very bad news for choice on the Web.
