This Year’s Seattle Search Marketing Expo (SMX Advanced) conference was great, aside from the uncomfortable red chairs it went off without a hitch.

⁃ Monday night started with a Microsoft sponsored party that had great catering, a DJ and great hors d’oeuvres. It took place close to the conference at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

They were offering to take pictures of people for fancy luggage tags (branded by Microsoft of course) which was funny to watch as people were drinking from an open bar and taking silly photos.

Many of the well known SEO companies were present and it was a nice start to the conference, I found some people I had met at SXSW and SMX Long Beach and the networking had begun.

It did rain the entire time, but that’s alright as we were inside the whole time anyway. Looking for cabs could get you wet and annoyed, but at least there were lots of ‘Vancouverish’ trees everywhere and it was a beautiful location on at the Bell Harbor Convention Center.

The three major search Engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live finally announced some clarifications on how they treat the Common REP (Robots Exclusion Protocol) Directives.

See YAHOO!’s blog about REP Directives.

Google’s Webmaster Central Blog re: REP Directives.

MSN’s blog about REP Directives can be read here.

There were some different answers regarding how the SE’s treat things such as the ‘nofollow’ attribute in links.

The MSN crew at first didn’t seem clear on what their own standards were, however at the end they did clarify that they don’t do anything different for nofollow links at this time. I’m still confused by their confusion. Good old Microsoft!

Google: - Were very clear that they don’t use noindex, nofollow for discovery (finding new content to index or at least store somewhere)

Yahoo: - Confirmed they do use nofollow links for Discovery.

I think the way to go here is to follow the industry leader, Google and do what they say and suggest.

For example, Yahoo! was really pushing the use of Yahoo Site Explorer to provide rewrites for URLs that are not SEO-Friendly - This will drive tons of traffic to Yahoo Site Explorer but I think its a pain in the ass to be honest. Plus the Yahoo folks didn’t even know how to use the microphone or speak in a way you could hear them, at EITHER panel I saw different Yahoo! folks at.

Google’s reps put on their ‘Google faces’ and obviously had public speaking training and were very easy to understand. Google’s Maile Ohye recommended that you take care of your own canonicalization issues using cookies for session IDs and putting the exact URL in your sitemap of canonicalized pages.

Pictured here is Maile from Google with Michael from Penwell, Colin and Pete from the UK and Mike from San Diego. I rolled with this fun crew most of the time, pictured here at the SeoMOZ party. Kudos to Jane and Rand’s crew for always being easily accesible to discuss SEO and for giving out sweet shirts and hoodies. - Back to the technical stuff…so this this can seem rather confusing…USE the sitemaps and tell Google which versions of pages to use. The key here is to put the canonical version IN the sitemap, NOT the human readable version and 301 the canonical page to the SEO friendly URL.

i.e. http://www.example.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CF300%2D006 would go in the xml sitemap.

And you would 301 redirect to http://www.example.com/human-readable-page.html

Obviously…

There’s a long road ahead of us but at least the Search Engines are finally starting to try and work together to provide standards for webmasters to follow that are the same for each engine. Google is obviously way ahead of the pack on this one.

Another interesting and completely unrelated topic was when a presenter explained this: How do you explain the word ’spicy’ to a child that has never tasted spicy? It is pretty much impossible without ever tasting something spicy….he also mentioned how the dictionary is a circular reference…A book full of words describing other words…circular. You would be able to point to a tree and say that physical thing over there is a tree…but without that the words describing it are all defined inside the ‘circular reference’ of the dictionary. I never thought if it that way…one for all the nerds out there i guess…

BUZZWORD: Progressive Enhancement

Some of you may not know this term. The Wikipedia definition is as follows:

“a strategy for web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic markup, and external stylesheet and scripting technologies. Progressive enhancement uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing those with better bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page.” - Source - Wikipedia

It is now recommended to start websites over using this methodology to make them accessible at every level rather than try to implement backwards changes to your existing sites.

Buying old Domains:

Some cool ways to find and buy old sites without losing their historical strength in Google were discussed. The goal is to use a TRUST to keep the WHOIS information the same, and to also buy the hosting account from the owner as well.

The way to do this if you do NOT want to see the WHOIS information change is to do the following three things.

1. Get a Lawyer and establish an intent to create a trust.
2. Make sure the certainty of the property - Take inventory and it is a wise idea to include the hosting as part of what you are buying to avoid any WHOIS changes.
3. The Object is the beneficiary.

So what does this legalese mean?

- Well I’m not a lawyer but the general idea here it to use legal means to ensure that the WHOIS registration does not change and it is also highly recommended to also purchase the hosting account from the current owner of the domain.

If you are interested in this I recommend checking out Seoroi.com who presented this at SMX Advanced.

H1 tags - only one per page? that’s what all the SEO’s say, but really why? any proof?

So I had an opportunity to discuss an issue about H1 tags that my company was having with Matt Cutts who is very easy to talk with and obviously passionate about his work at Google. Even during one of the panels he was sitting with some of the folks I was hanging with and was very helpful with his little notepad describing how Google does specific things that would affect the sites he was asked about.

At the end of it all we pretty much agreed that, - Matt even said this - “You don’t need Matt Cutts”. The reason is that it is at this point pretty obvious when something is shady or not. If the work you are doing is for the search engines and not for the users and affects the user experience than it could be risky.

(Matt Cutts discussing use of multiple H1s on pages with Aaron Kronis) and using his diagram pad as always.)

We discussed the issue that our programming team here at Wpromote is having with regards to the use of H1s at the beginning of sections rather than reserving it for just the main page header.

Almost every SEO I know swears by ‘One H1 tag per page with the top keyword phrase for that site in it’ and here Matt said that it was alright to have MULTIPLE H1s on the page as long as you don’t stuff too many keywords into the H1 tags and design the site for the users.

My question to any SEOs out there (thanks to Merlin for pointing this out btw) is that other than all the SEOs saying to only have one H1 per page, where is this proven to be any different then if there are multiple H1s used at the heading of each section the way the H1 tag was designed. This reserves H1-H6 for usage if needed - great for automated pages and sites… the limit of the H1 to one usage can change the programming and possibly cause you to run out of Hx’s if you get up to the depth of H5 o H6 and have used up your H1 at the top of your pages. Not super critical but nonetheless not very well explained or documented in the SEO community.

Other things to note - if you are using IP Delivery (Cloaking) then the content you serve the search engines MUST be the same as the media you are normally serving users. i.e. the text of the flash better look like the text you send Google or you will be booted from the index. The question was asked “Can you describe the video that is in flash?” the answer from the Search Engines was ‘NO - you may use a static image however’.

- So if some of this was a little dry, there’s a lot of new exciting things going on in the SEO community and with the new tools that Wpromote are developing (thanks to CP) for our SEO division will really help us out with getting the best results for our clients. Welcome to the next generation of Internet Rockstars who know how to use Progressive Enhancement to build search friendly and great user-friendly websites.

I missed the SeoMOZ party but I had to get home…back to LA.

Taken on the final approach to LAX looking off the edge of the world.

-KRONiS

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As the Internet converts to web 2.0 many 1.0 business startups are rethinking their business strategies. eBay, one of the online dinosaurs that lived through the burst, has found their platform is something of a relic. Auctions are now the way of the past. “The auctions are nothing like what they once were. They won’t ever come back,” says Bruce Hershenson. a long time seller on eBay who plans to discontinue using the site and take a stab at his own ecommerce website. Today’s savvy Internet user is an instant gratification junkie. They want what they are looking for and they want it now, at the best price.

Everyone knows what eBay is. eBay has even become a verb. Recently, eBay has started to restructure its business with the departure of their former CEO Meg Whitman. Whitman’s last ad campaigns touted “Shop Victoriously,” while new CEO John Donahoe believes fixed pricing is king. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Derek Brown states: “eBay has significantly de-emphasized dynamic-priced items in favor of fixed-price listings in the last six months.” eBay’s “Buy it Now” makes up 42% of items sold through their service and is growing 22% each year. With these figures, it’s no wonder eBay is changing up its platform.

Not everyone is happy though. In a push to make this change happen, eBay is increasing its auction rates in hopes of increasing “Buy it Now” listings. Pissed off parties include the Moms and Pops of eBay. “… I am exactly the kind of seller who built eBay and brings people to eBay on a daily basis,” claims Hershenson. “And it seems to me your changes are hitting me hardest.” He says the increased fees would cost him $180,000 a year, where he was previously paying $120,000 a year. In protest, many eBay sellers are holding an old fashioned boycott. “Everybody is mad because they feel that this company got built on them, and when eBay felt that they no longer needed them, they tried to get rid of them. It is deplorable,” says Maggie Dressler, an eBay seller who has auctioned on the site since 2001.

With this new direction, many like Hershenson will have to pack up shop altogether, or go at it alone changing the eBay auction house as we know it.

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There has been a lot of discussion recently about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and subsequent bid withdrawal, followed shortly thereafter with talks of the possible acquisition of Yahoo’s search business. All of this hullabaloo begs the question, why? And the obvious reason is that Microsoft, and even Yahoo for that matter, lag considerably behind Google in the paid search advertising market. By buying/merging/acquiring Yahoo, Microsoft intends to give Google a run for its money.

I’m not sure anyone actually believes that this is possible, but more importantly does it even matter? The value of advertising online has been clearly realized by all involved, especially Google the dominant market leader. Why spend the billions of dollars and years of restructuring and R&D to take on an adversary well entrenched with a high ground position? If it was up to me, I wouldn’t. Instead I would rethink, regroup, and innovate. Forfeit the paid search empire to Google and move on to the display search market. Just so everyone is on the same page, a display ad is a graphical advertisement. It can be a static picture ad, video, or multimedia presentation. They aren’t dependent on what someone searches for, but rather are delivered by the content on the page someone is viewing or preferences the browser/site has cataloged about the user. In other words, highly targeted, pretty ads.

The paid search advertising market is still growing at an incredible rate, it’s expected to double by 2012, but display advertising is expected to triple in the same time frame. And right now there is no obvious leader in the online display advertising market. Display marketing will also attract brand marketers with extremely deep pockets, who right now have no real place in paid search. Companies like Budweiser and Coca-Cola.

There is a tremendous opportunity here for Microsoft to impose its still significant will and really capture an emerging market. Based on their track record I’d have a hard time betting in their favor, but the opportunity is there nonetheless.

So, To: Microsoft, shift your focus to display adverts and beat Google at their own game, only this time it’s a little more colorful, engaging, and altogether prettier game. Also, it’s a game you have a chance at winning.

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So simple a kid could use it!

Nowadays when people ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, by simply typing exactly what they have asked me into Google returns usually some type of relevant answer that may help me answer that question.

But seriously folks, how is your attention span compared to the next generation of the largest new market of consumers - the young 8-15 year olds out there who spend the most of their parent’s money on the latest movies, games, gadgets, you name it.

What I’m getting at is that it is about time things start to change. How much longer will be we inhibited by browsers. Why can’t an online community exist in a much more interesting medium than a text based one.

The future is coming soon and it will drastically change our use of the Internet as we know it today. Soon our desktops will be able to do things we never dreamed of in Hi-definition and with great clarity and speed. As the new technology emerges some of the questions that will come out of it are;

Music Industry - How come a song that was just released by Ashley Simpson costs $0.99 on iTunes and a classic hit song by the Beatles also costs $0.99. There is something really wrong with this and I feel that the Beatles track should be ‘valued by the its track record’.

VS

Ashley Simpson VS The Beatles

How in world do you do this? That’s the million dollar question. New delivery methods are undoubtedly on the way and the television channels we currently watch on TV networks will soon become merged into your desktop via Hi-Speed bandwith over IP. Why not just buy it FROM the artist instead of iTunes? For now its just easier.

The whole way we search is going to change too.

Why when I search am I limited to the algorithm that Google has created and has made all these companies become slaves to? Something gonna come soon and shake this all up.

Why when I search on images in Google am I limited to such a TERRIBLE interface?

The point here is that a browser really can’t cut it for certain types of searches…the way of the text-based search is going bye-bye and Google has about 3-5 years left at this model…which really can’t be changed other than adding video search. Unless Google develops a better browser soon they will become a lot less of what we are all seemingly praying to as ‘google gods’ for the time being.

What does this mean for the future of search marketing?

Drastic changes so we’d better be prepared.

If there is a better way for us to get content faster and search visually rather than with text, the entire concept of SEO will be out of date and I may need to switch industries or redefine how to help clients reach their customers online.

Just something to think about. Maybe we can figure this out some way and stay ahead of the 9 year old technology we currently embrace daily and are afraid to ‘piss off’ and get kicked out of.

Your friendly neighborhood SEO.

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Lawmakers in the U.K. recently announced new and stringent regulations concerning word-of-mouth marketing online, scheduled to go into effect on May 26. What does it mean? Brands who hire reps to knowingly promote a product or service online without explicitly identifying themselves as marketers are subject to fines, and, in some cases, prison. Same applies to bloggers who write about a product or service without disclosing they are being paid to do so. Wow.

In other words, companies who hire people to pose as consumers online in favor of a particular brand, product, or service are no longer seen as witty, clever, or smart. As for whether they were witty, clever, or smart in the first place, consider the long-time debate concerning ethics and transparency in marketing, and you’ll soon realize it is all up for grabs.

Onward, although the impending restrictions govern online marketing exclusively, these laws seem to suggest a future where similar restrictions could be applied to brick-and-mortar tactics, and, if such laws came to fruition, how would they be enforced? Well, before I wax poetic on the deeper meaning of marketing or explain why ethics and values are the cornerstone of any successful branding effort, blah blah blah, let’s consider this question. It’s a big one.

Let’s take you and your new iPhone, for example. Say you travel to London to spend time with a girl you met on MySpace who seems just amazing enough to warrant a hellish flight in a cramped plane, and, while you are there, you run into your old college roommate from NYU, the Brit who drank coffee instead of tea, liked pop Country instead of pop punk, and somehow managed to to alienate everyone with his freakishly strong and unintelligible accent. So you and your roommate, the Brit, are sitting there in a pub and sharing a pint and you whip out your iPhone to show him a few pictures of the mystery girl you’re destined to meet, excitedly describing your illicit plans when, BAM, all of a sudden, police sirens. Handcuffs. The muffled sound of walkie-talkies working hard to decide your fate.

Sound ridiculous? It is. Still, the above is one of the many far-flung scenarios that come to mind when considering the implications of new and impossibly broad laws. Clearly I don’t have enough information at my disposal to understand how such a law would actually work, and maybe the reality is it will never get that far. What I can tell you is guerrilla marketing that employs word-of-mouth tactics can be risky, for the ambassador, and the brand. While running the Central Region street marketing campaign for one of Nokia’s hand-held devices several years ago, more than one of my reps in places like Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Fort Worth, were harassed, kicked out, and, in one worst case scenario, temporarily jailed, for a various string of defenses running the gamut from things as innocent as “loitering” to the much harder-to-pin-down “you trickered us.” In almost all cases of unfortunate consequence, our reps were not wearing their Nokia-branded t-shirts, hats, and wristbands, or carrying their Nokia-branded backpacks - and that is likely because people were more inclined to listen to a messenger they didn’t believe was employed by a brand.

At the end of the day, the street campaign saw much success. Did the unplanned lack of transparency on certain levels hurt the brand in the long run? Hard to say, hard to tell. The bottom line? Brands in the UK are no longer being trusted to make these decisions for themselves, at least in the online sphere. And until we know what exactly what the Brits plan to do when they find a could-be-consumer-or-could-be-undercover-marketer “lolling” online while touting the benefits of their brand-new INSERT LATEST HOT PRODUCT NAME HERE, be careful with whom you talk.

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More than you may realize, these days many of the blogs you read are actually written for one purpose.

Search Engine Rankings

Often a writer will be given a keyword phrase such as ‘Blog Search Rankings‘ and be told to write a 500-700 word post about that. The sole purpose of this is to help their site rank higher for that search term. The only real way to improve rankings and this is the kicker: is to build great sites.

So, while choosing interesting topics to write about may seem like a better idea than writing about the sites main keywords, the very best way to do this is to write something interesting that ties back into the primary search phrase you wish to rank for.

So for example, if you wanted to write about ‘Blog Search Rankings’ as this post is mainly focused on, my approach in this article that you are reading is to be ‘helpful’ in some manner. It is a ‘how to’ style post that describes something useful that a reader may actually use.

On that note here are some ‘how to tips’ for blog writing that will help with your search engine rankings.

H1 tags

After you post your blog, in FireFox press either ‘Control-U’ or ‘Command-U’ to view the source. Older IE6 or other browser users may need to use the dropdown menu and select ‘View Source’. If your blogging software is configured correctly, hopefully the title of your post will be in an H1 tag. If it isn’t you may consider editing some of your preferences to make this so. The key about H1s is that you should only have ONE per page that highlights the most important keyword phrase for that page. For this post the only H1 tag you will find that is actually rendered is the one surrounding ‘How to Write Blog Posts that Rank Well in Search Engines’ at the top of this post.

H2, H3, H4 tags. - Any sub headings should be surrounded by H2 tags, and tertiary levels of headings should be H3, H4, etc. the further you go indenting. You can use your style sheets to determine what the respective heading will look like.

For example you could put:

<H2 class=”header-2-style”>

if you have a class called ‘.header-2-style’ predefined in your stylesheet.

This is something you can easily do while posting your piece and doesn’t have to be done later by some ‘SEO Expert’.

Link Titles, Title & Alt Attributes for Images

As many of you may already know, when you mouseover an image sometimes descriptive text will be displayed. This is from the ‘alt’ attribute in the <img> tag. More less widespread is the use of a ‘title’ attribute within the <img> tag.

i.e. <img src=”http://www.wpromote.com/affiliates/wpromote.jpg” title=”The Wpromote Logo” alt=”Wpromote Logo”>

Notice how there are both a title and an alt description. These serve two purposes…the title is for google and the alt is for the user who mouses over the image and gets a description.

For Hyperlinks the same concept of a title applies and not many people would ever think to do this intuitively. This is what you should use:

<a href=”http://www.wpromote.com” title=”Wpromote PPC Management Experts” target=”_blank”>Wpromote PPC Management</a>

Every link on your site should have a title. The title tells Google what your links are and will help with your rankings. Now if you want to hyperlink the image above to go to the site in the link example above…it may seem like a lot but this is really what you should put in the source code:

<a href=”http://www.wpromote.com” title=”Wpromote PPC Management Experts” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.wpromote.com/affiliates/wpromote.jpg” title=”The Wpromote Logo” alt=”Wpromote Logo”></a>

Here is the same example rendered:

Other Tips

If you use WordPress (I am currently using WordPress to edit this post) depending on which SEO(Search Engine Optimization) related plugins you use there will be options to create custom titles etc. If you use the ‘SEO Title Tag’ plugin from NetConcepts then you will have that option - i’d suggest cutting and pasting the post title in the ‘Title Tag’ field that appears AFTER the post when this plugin is turned on.

Tags

Be sure to add keywords that are in your post to the ‘Tags’ section in WordPress right after the post content section. examples: for this post I will include: Seo Title Tag Plugin, Title Tag Plugin, Blog Seo, Blog Search Rankings, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Wpromote and others. Try to put at least 5 tags in the tag section that are found in your post if possible.

Categories

Make sure you select an appropriate category for your blog post. If you don’t have one in your category list, then simply add one that makes sense and is ‘relevant’ (That word again) to your blog post. You can select more than one category if it applies, for this post I chose, SEO, Internet News and Wpromote. I noticed that there is no ‘blogging’ category so I created one and added it to that as well.

We’re Almost Done!

At the bottom of the page below the blog content post section below the tags and categories is an area for Advanced Options.
Under ‘Excerpt’ here is where you will write the description that comes up in the Google search engines when that post comes up for a result. The average length is 160 characters. You want 2-3 sentences that describe the contents of that specific post and preferable have the main keyword phrases for that page closer to the beginning of the description.

This is VERY important, more important than the link titles (which people never seem to take the time to do, thus making it easier to outrank their sites) and is almost as important as the Title tag for the page.

-Till next time

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EarthLink announced today that it is “cutting the cord” or “pulling the plug” on its Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia (don’t excuse the impossible pun), once thought to be the national model for wireless Internet access.

Because of the decrease in dial-up Internet subscribers EarthLink tried to move into an untapped form of Internet delivery on a wide scale. The idea was to pepper wireless stations throughout the city that would broadcast an Internet signal. Subscribers could then connect using their user name and password, just like a wireless home network. This idea not only benefited the city, who could charge rent for allowing EarthLink to place their equipment on light posts, but also people who hated wires and EarthLink itself as an Internet provider.

EarthLink’s $17 million investment, along with its lofty promise, has turned into a failure. They projected a minimum of 100,000 users, but currently retain only 9,457 subscribers. Due to these low numbers, EarthLink stated they are losing $200,000 a month maintaining the network. Their subscribers don’t even cover half of the operating costs. In fact, EarthLink wasn’t able give away the network to nonprofits, even after offering an additional $1 million. The city has even refused to take over the network based on the sheer fact that it would cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year to maintain it.

“It’s been an unfortunate situation,” EarthLink Chief Executive Officer Rolla Huff told The Associated Press. “It was a great idea a few years ago…but it’s an idea that simply didn’t make it.”
Huff said EarthLink plans to stay focused on serving individuals using dial-up Internet service and casual Internet surfers who want an economical plan.

You would think that with all of the mobile devices that connect to Wi-Fi these days, this technology would be of tremendous value. Perhaps it still is, but the implementation was poor. It will be interesting to see if another company steps up to the challenge, or if wired will continue to rule. I suspect that it won’t, especially with the deployment of 3G in the US; but for now it seems that’s the way things will go.

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We see people all the time using tricky ways to show above legitimate websites in the search results. Google’s spam specialist, Matt Cutts, educates us on the tricks these spammers are using and how to protect ourselves against them.

Web spammers are generally trying to generate profit from free links or trying to force some sort of propaganda onto the viewer. They use tricks like filling a page with common misspellings of search terms or repetitive keywords in white text that cannot be seen without highlighting the entire page. These tricks make the spam pages seem relevant to the search term and can position them above more relevant, legitimate sites.

Google uses a technique called PageRank to prevent against this type of spam. Rather than simply viewing the content on a page and ranking based on that content, Google looks at the back links to a site and decides the importance and relevancy of the people that link to that page. This allows them to determine the individual value of the page and whether or not the site is spam.

Matt Cutts tells us one procedure to prevent against spam attacks is to incorporate information in the email forms that proves the person filling out the form is a human being. Things like asking a simple math question or requiring a valid email address. Anything that a robot cannot fill in with fake information will help you to differentiate a legitimate customer from a spammer.

Another significant idea to note is that there are illegitimate companies in existence today that claim to sell Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services when they are simply selling spam. It is important to look into the company you are using and discover in detail the strategies utilized to improve your natural rankings. Use common sense, if they doing something that seems sneaking or too good to be true, it probably is. Nobody is going to get you to number one with a click of a button. Anyone claiming to have ‘the secret’ to the search engine algorithm is likely a fake. There are in fact capable SEO firms out there and it takes months to get the results you are looking for. Google even provides a service that allows you to register your site to be reviewed and they will alert you if your website has been hacked or if there are any other problems.

To have your website reviewed visit google.com/webmasters. Please feel free to watch Matt Cutts’ presentation in its entirety as well.

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Edwin’s article about the “history of the web” really got me thinking what the web will be like years from now. The Semantic Web could possibly play a major role in the evolution of the World Wide Web. In general terms, The Semantic web is an extension of the World Wide Web where information is more standardized and better defined so that it is easier for computers to understand exactly what people are looking for on the web.

W3C director Tim Berners-Lee, a visionary behind The Semantic Web, explains more here . . . “I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

So what changes need to be made to make this possible? The major requirement is a markup language more data oriented than the current convention of HTML. While HTML uses “meta tags” to provide a way for computers to categorize content on web pages, the semantic web will require documents to be published in the data specific language RDF, or Resource Description Framework. This RDF format is what will allow human perception to be understood by computers so that data is better filed and handled. While HTML describes documents and links between them, RDF describes arbitrary things such as people, meetings, or events.

While there defiantly are some clear benefits to the semantic web, there are draw backs as well. Is the idea all together unrealistic? The idea of a semantic web isn’t new. Berners-Lee’s 2001 article in Scientific American discussed the topic and we have yet to see implementation. Censorship and privacy also becomes an issue. The semantic web would make is much easier for governments to control the viewing and creation of online information. One last major concern is the amount of time it would take to publish content in this new format. Not only are we creating a document for the human reader, but an additional format for the computer. However, this problem is being addressed through the possible use of web aps creating a machine-readable format upon the publishing of data or the request of a machine for such data.

It will definitely be interesting to see what the future has to offer.

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