Re: hidden meta data and bolt on attributes

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Robert O'Callahan <robert@ocallahan.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 5:20 AM, Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I don't know where these ideas originated, but meta data and "hidden"
>> page data has been around for over a decade, and has successfully been
>> integrated into most web pages. There is meta data that covers how the
>> document is to be served, the character set,
>
> These have been integrated into most Web pages, but they are visible
> metadata since they affect the rendering of the page for all users.
>

Good point.


>> microformats for calendar
>> information, RDFa for covering broader semantic interests
>
> These have been integrated into very few Web pages.

I disagree. Microformats and RDFa have been integrated into a
significant number of pages. A couple of the larger CMS implement some
form of one or the other. Several government sites around the world
also implement metadata, such as RDFa or Microformat. Or both, they
aren't incompatible. Now, there's Facebook open graph protocol, being
discussed in another thread.

Interesting news, and timely, because it impacts on a couple of issues
related to this group: the polyglot document, as well as Issue 41.

>
>>
>> Are these hidden meta data and bolted on attributes useful? Not long
>> ago, Best Buy reported that the use of such hidden meta data and
>> bolted on attributed increased traffic to the company's web site by
>> 30% [2].
>
>
> I read the article and still have no idea what Best Buy actually did.
> Comments in the article say that the visible page changed dramatically when
> metadata was added; if so, there is no evidence that invisible metadata is
> responsible for the traffic increase.
>

The company integrated Google Rich Snippets using RDFa into the
company's web site, increasing their site traffic 30% as a result.

> Rob

Shelley

Received on Friday, 23 April 2010 00:58:11 UTC