Wilson Bentley, who created this photomicrograph, devoted his life to the study of snowflakes. Look closer . . .
With metadata tags, websites crystallize into collections.
Source: http://snowflakebentley.com/
Wilson Bentley, who created this photomicrograph, devoted his life to the study of snowflakes. Look closer . . .
With metadata tags, websites crystallize into collections.
Source: http://snowflakebentley.com/
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Use metadata in webpages to add descriptions, keywords, dates, and other details to make website navigation easier and information retrieval faster.
Metadata tags are used to gather related pages from far-flung locations into groups. Including metadata in webpage source code gives you a high level of control over special collections.
Metadata tags go in the "head" section of webpages. If you're handcoding pages, place metadata tags between the <head> and </head> tags. If you're using a web editor, use the Code view to place metatags manually.
Here's a metadata tag for author:
<meta name="dc:creator" content="Wilson Bentley" />
The example uses a common metadata type, Dublin Core, although there are others. No single metadata standard has crystallized.
In the early web, META tags were used in HTML source code to define a site description and list keywords for search engines. The use of metatags for keywords influenced page ranking for one search engine in particular — Alta Vista, now handled by Yahoo — which has been supplanted to an extent by Google.
The use of metadata tagging has evolved into structured standards such as Dublin Core and the Getty system of metadata tagging for artworks. The goal of these efforts is to facilitate programmed, automated, predictable, and reliable control of information collections. If web designers become fluent with metadata, the impact on information retrieval will be far-reaching.