Yahoo!, Bibleref, and RDFa

http://www.openbible.info/blog/2008/03/yahoo-bibleref-and-rdfa/
"
Then David Peterson, author of a Sitepoint article about the earlier  
Yahoo! announcement, wrote a comment that encapsulates the chicken/egg  
problem inherent in getting a new microformat off the ground:

   Currently the search engine only indexes 3 microformats (hCard,  
hCalendar, hReview). So if you started indexing your hBible [i.e.,  
Bibleref] it wouldn’t pick it up.

   The problem with microformats is that each time a new one is created the  
search indexer needs to develop a custom extractor to make sense of your  
microformat. That is why Yahoo microsearch is only indexing 3 of the most  
popular format.

So what should Bibleref’s proponents do? It’s possible we could convince  
Yahoo! to index Bibleref, giving it the traction it needs to take off.  
However, I wouldn’t necessarily expect Yahoo! to do a good job  
understanding the data, in part because of the looseness of the standard  
(which I see as a good thing). And if Yahoo! doesn’t understand it well,  
then search results based on Bibleref won’t be very high quality. But a  
lot depends on how Yahoo! exposes the data. (And they may not even want to  
index Bibleref.)

Another possibility is to change Bibleref to be compatible with RDFa, an  
emerging standard that Yahoo! does understand.
"

Steven

Received on Monday, 17 March 2008 09:53:28 UTC