Google should index linked metatada

I’m just starting to think about the avenues opened by Google Base, but this brings a question: why doesn’t Google “simply” index metadata attached to web pages?

Look for example at what PiggyBank does, any web page having a link like

<link
rel="alternate" type="application/rdf+xml"
title="Metadata about this page"
href="http://somewhere-on-the-web.com/page224/metadata.rdf">

would have its metadata indexed.

And of course it doesn’t have to be RDF. Talking about this with Sylvain the other day, he came up with

<link
rel="alternate" type="application/googlebase+xml"
title="Metadata about this page"
href="http://somewhere-on-the-web.com/page224/metadata.xml">

Where Google might accept the same formats as the Google Base bulk upload does.

Simple enough, or not? I wonder why they’re not doing that already, it would be a nice way of making the web more semantic, incrementally, with little additional effort on their part (well, a few more containers maybe ;-)

The motivation for people to add this metadata would certainly be high: who doesn’t want their web pages to be better indexed?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 1:41 pm and is filed under The Web, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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