Website metadata, definition and characteristics check this article

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Website metadata– With the settlement of new technologies and everything related to the virtual environment, the concept of metadata has gained special prominence. In the computer sector, it is widely used and is always related to the data that is used to describe other types of data.

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Definitions of metadata

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Metadata is a term that was coined in the 60s to describe a set of data. But it is now when it is gaining more importance and when more is being heard by the virtual world. Its first meaning was that of data on data. But from 2004 it evolved to become what we know today: website metadata.

The etymology of this term consists of two words, one Greek and one Latin. On the one hand the Greek word “meta”, which means after or beyond. And on the other hand the Latin word “datum”, which means data. Likewise, the metadata expression is formed as beyond the data. Based on this, metadata is a set of data that describes the informative content of a resource, files or information about them. That is, it is information that describes other data. However, the word website metadata does not have an exclusive definition. Since there are several expressions with which it is known, such as information about data. Information about information or information about information.

Although the word metadata is used today, generally for the field of computing, the concept is prior to the Internet. Although the interest it has raised has made it be used in this environment. The term website metadata is mainly used in the field of information technology. Focused on companies due to the acquisition of a unique relevance in recent times as a result of the large amounts of information currently handled in companies. For this reason, metadata is used as an aid to manage the data. Or information with which they work for greater effectiveness and performance.

What are its uses?

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Although website metadata has a concrete utility, it is true that metadata can be used for many more things than the essential one. Due to this, metadata has as its main characteristic that they are multi functional. It is a tool that has multiple advantages that enable good data management when the management. And governance processes of the information contained therein are carried out. Thus, we will detail all the functions that have the metadata:

They facilitate search and analysis: metadata helps to search data more easily and allows the analysis of data from the source itself. Favoring self-documentation, transformation and reporting, among other functions.
Improved data governance: managing website metadata in a standardized environment makes good data governance possible. And this, in turn, makes the program successful.
Integration help: using metadata for joint use between IT users and companies, it allows for a better complete integration. In this way it also helps to improve the management of the data more globally.
Facilitates standardization: this is possible thanks to the elimination of errors and weaknesses. Thus, it improves the quality of metadata in the course of its life cycle. In addition, through the management of these, you get a more complete view of the cycle, from start to finish.
Improve reports: the correct management of website metadata will make the reports better, allowing them to be delivered safely and reliably. This is due to the ease of intervention that makes the processes of higher quality.
Make faster developments: accessing metadata intelligently increases the creators’ production and minimizes the connectivity sourcing period. This reduces the costs of the changes that occur.
Manage changes: thanks to metadata management an improved vision is offered, as well as the control required for the integration of business data. The changes will be observed through the automation of the impact studies. So that action can be taken to solve the problems that may arise due to this.
Greater security: in the event that changes occur, you should protect the critical data of the company. As well as help to strictly comply with the regulations in question. This can be done as a consequence of the proper management of the website metadata.

Classification of website metadata

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Based on everything related above, you can see that website metadata is a tool that provides the necessary help to companies that dominate a large amount of information. Organizing it to facilitate the work of users and accelerating their productivity. In addition, there are many uses for which metadata are used. But before moving forward in the field we must stop along the way, to know the classification of the metadata in terms of its functions. Thus, these are classified using three essential criteria, differentiated by: their function, their variability and their content.

By its function: in this first classification, it is understood that the data that is handled can belong to one of the three types of functions that it has: logical, symbolic or sub symbolic. By briefly detailing them, we can say that logic is data that explains how symbolic data can be used to make deductions of logical results. So they are characterized by compression. The symbolic data are those that detail the sub symbolic data, so they add meaning. And finally, the sub symbolic data is what does not contain any information about its meaning.
Because of its variability: in this aspect, website metadata can be classified according to their variability, in two groups. On the one hand, there would be the immutable. Which is the data that does not change regardless of the part of the resource that is visible. And on the other hand, there would be the mutable. Which are those that are different from the others and even differ from part to part.
For its content: this last classification is the most usual. In this case, the metadata is divided by its content. In this way. It is possible to distinguish between the metadata that detail the resource itself and the metadata that describe the content of that resource. However, you can even subdivide these two groups into more subgroups depending on the precision with which you want to carry the classification of the data.

The life cycle of metadata

The website metadata have a structure in terms of the functions they perform. That is, they have a life cycle that goes detailing each stage through which it passes. Doing certain tasks in each of them. Thus, in this aspect we can differentiate the life cycle of website metadata in three phases: creation, manipulation and destruction.

Creation: this is when metadata is created. These can be developed in different ways, either manually, automatically or semiautomatic ally.
Manual form: it can be a somewhat complicated procedure, although everything depends on the format used and the volume that is being searched. Anyway, it is more used any of the other two forms of creation that we detail next.
Automatic form: in this case, the software receives all the information required by itself, that is. Without any external help. However, despite the technological advances in terms of the algorithms used in this aspect. It is not feasible for the computer to achieve on its own, remove each and every metadata automatically. So this form also does not become the most appropriate, although it is also used frequently.
Semi-automatic form: this is the ideal way to create metadata. This system establishes a series of autonomous algorithms that the user in question supports and that do not allow the software to obtain the desired data by itself. But need external help for this.
Manipulation: in this phase changes are made in certain aspects. Therefore, if the data in question change, the metadata should also change and this will be done easily and automatically. Although there are times when human help is needed to devise this work.
Destruction: the last phase that can be done in the life of the metadata is the destruction of them. In this case you have to study well how to do it. In certain cases. The metadata is eliminated at the same time as their resources are jointly. However, there are other situations in which metadata are retained for different reasons, for example to control changes in a document.

What is the common use of metadata?

As we have already seen in a previous section, the term metadata has several uses. However, there is a common use that is the most frequent and is the refinement of searches to search engines. In this way, the user is helped to find more accurate results and not lose time searching manually. Likewise, the metadata provide the necessary assistance to categorize the information that is available and make the communication between the user and the computer easier. Therefore, metadata facilitate the work by classifying and structuring the available data.

Metadata storage

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We have already assessed the question of how metadata are classified according to the data or information they contain, but there are still other questions, such as where metadata can be stored to keep them safe and well organized. In this case, there are two ways to securely store the website metadata:

Internal repository: that is, deposit the metadata internally in the same file as the data.
External deposit: it is about depositing them externally in the same resource.

In principle, the metadata used to be stored internally in the same document or file as the data itself and this was done in order to allow a favorable administration of the same. On the other hand, the external deposit is usually considered the best storage option today. This is because in this way there is the possibility that the metadata is grouped to improve the search actions. However, there is a problem in this aspect. It is about the way of joining a resource with its metadata. In this sense, in most cases the Ur Is technique is used, which locates the documents in the World Wide Web, although this also generates another problem in turn and is that not all have documents that have URLs.

However, there is one aspect that should be highlighted regarding the storage of metadata: coding. Based on this, the website metadata was originally saved using encrypted texts or even binary coding to store them in specific files. But nowadays it is customary to use the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to carry out this task, which helps to define the markup languages created by the World Wide Web Consortium used to store data in a readable form. This applies both to the users and to the computers themselves, since it is a language that has many features that make it suitable for these cases. Although in spite of the advantages that it entails. It also has a series of drawbacks, such as memory space. Since the data requires more volume than the binary format provides.