Re: [sdw] Spatial Data on the Web - Best Practice 2 - Value and approach for indexing individual Spatial Things (#1085)

INSPIRE has held a [Workshop on making spatial data discoverable through mainstream search engines](https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/display/InspireMIG/Workshop+Programme). 

The linked page contains the program and for each contribution the abstract and the slides. For the discussion-slots, the slides contain also a summary of the discussion. There are also slides capturing the final discussion (conclusion and next steps).

Here is a summary from my personal notes (I have excluded aspects that are related to the usual metadata/catalog issues):

The workshop gave a helpful overview and had good discussions. There weren't really surprising results, but there were new insights on details and there are several activities related to the topic - it would be useful to monitor their progress/results, could also be input to future updates of BP2.

Most of the following is already in BPs 1 and 2, but there are also some new aspects.

Stable identifiers:
* Identifiers should be HTTPS URIs
* Minted URIs that redirect to your API, the minted URI is the canonical URI

Good web pages - which content?
* The provision of websites for features should primarily not be for search engines, but aimed at human users; they should provide information, not just display data, and generally be richer than the typical feature data in most records today
* Web pages for features can be automatically created with tools such as the implementations of OGC API features that match the JSON/XML content to the feature, but such pages are often of limited use to the intended audience without further customization
* Publishing features with persistent URIs and easily understandable information directly accessible to users can lead to more linking between data, more centralization and less copying
* There are different target groups; for example, developers (who are used to working with datasets and APIs, but can have no or only limited domain or GIS knowledge) or citizens (are not interested in the dataset, only in individual objects and have no domain or GIS knowledge/tools)
* The data content (HTML, but also in the JSON) should be formulated according to the requirements of the target group(s); test: How does the availability of the web pages improve the processes of the user?
* Web pages should describe real-world objects in terms that users would understand/use; these are often different from the language used by the domain experts
* Include/link to related information and actions on that resource that are relevant for the target users; for example, other info about the location, nearby things of interest, user feedback, workflows, etc.
* schema.org annotations, at least for pages you want to have indexed
* The information should be up to date and changes should be documented
* The context should be visible, especially for users who are used to working with data sets: For example, the feature page should be linked to the landing page of the dataset
* Tools: use structured markup tools to test that content is visible

Indexing by search engines:
* Focus on useful web pages first
* Decide what needs to be indexed, perhaps even exclude indexing unless features are referenced from a 3rd party
* Think about the user journey from the page
* Follow SEO practices and their tools; analyze queries that lead users to the page and monitor what happens
* Use of a separate host/domain, if applicable, to avoid impact/dilution of the indexing of many feature web pages on the ranking of other web pages in the domain

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Received on Sunday, 21 July 2019 13:36:03 UTC