Should I make it a priority to semantically mark up my pages? Or is the Semantic Web a good idea that will never really get off the ground?

Question

The Semantic Web is an awesome idea. And there are a lot of really cool things that have been done using the semantic web concept. But after all this time I am beginning to wonder if it is all just a pipe dream in the end. If we will ever truly succeed in making a fully semantic web, and if we are not going to be able to utilize semantic web to provide our users a deeper experience on the web is it worth spending the time and extra effort to ensure FULLY semantic web pages are created by myself or my team?

I know that semantic pages usually just turn out better (more from attention to detail than anything I would think), so I am not questioning attempting semantic page design, what I am currently mulling over, is dropping the review and revision process of making a partially semantic page, fully semantic in hopes of some return in the future.

Answer 1

On a practical level, some aspects of the semantic web are taking off:

1) Semantic markup helps search engines identify key content and improves keyword results.

2) Online identity is a growing concern, and semantic markup in links like rel='me' help to disambiguate these things. Autodiscovery of social connections is definitely upcoming. (Twitter uses XFN markup for all of your information and your friends, for example)

3) Google (and possibly others) are starting to pay attention to microformats like hCard and hCalendar to gather greater information about people and events going on. This feature is still on the "very new" list, but these microformats are useful examples of the semantic web.

It may take some time for it all to get there, but there are definite possible benefits. I wouldn't put a huge amount of effort into it these days, but its definitely worth keeping in mind when you're developing a site.

Answer 2

Yahoo and Google have both announced support for RDFa annotations in your HTML content. Check out Yahoo SearchMonkey and Google Rich Snippets. If you care about SEO and driving traffic to your site, these are good ways to get better search engine coverage today.

Additionally, the Common Tag vocabulary is an RDFa vocabulary for annotating and organizing your content using semantic tags. Yahoo and Google will make use of these annotations, and existing publishing platforms such as Drupal 7 are investigating adopting the Common Tag format.

Answer 3

I would say no.

The reason I would say this is that the current return for creating a fully semantic web page right now is practically zero. You will have to spend extra time and effort, and there is very little to show for it now.

Effort is not like investing, however, so doing it now has no practical advantage. If the semantic web does start to show potential, then you can always revisit it and tap into that potential later.

Answer 4

It should be friendly to search engines, but going further is not going to provide good ROI.

Furthermore, what are you selling? A lot of the purpose behind being semantic beyond being indexable is easier 3rd party integration and data mining (creating those ontologies). Are these desirable traits for your data sets? If you are selling advertisement, making it easier for others to pull in your content is probably not going to be helpful.

It's all about where you want to spend your time.

Answer 5

You shouldn't do anything without a requirement. Otherwise, how do you know if you've succeeded? Do you have a requirement for being semantic? How much? How do you measure success? How do you measure return on investment?

Don't do anything just because of fads, unless keeping up with fads is a requirement.

Answer 6

Let me ask you a question - would you live in a house or buy a car that wasn't built according to a spec?

"So is this 4x4 lumber, upheld with a steel T-Beam?"
"Nope...we managed to rig the foundation on on PVC Piping...pretty cool, huh."