Cabinet Office
An important aspect of publishing information and offering services on the Internet is to ensure that people can find it. Experience on the web illustrates that this is not always easy, with search facilities returning hundreds, if not thousands of options, in response to a specific enquiry. General research shows that two out of three searchers give up before finding what they want.
Search engines and directory services are the primary tools that enable users to locate information on the Internet. Search engines and directory services technologies are evolving rapidly. Consequently, it can be quite difficult to predict how specific technical features on a website and the way its content is structured will affect its ranking in response to searches made in different search engines.
To improve the likelihood that web pages will rank highly in the results of users’ searches for the information they contain, it is essential that websites incorporate additional descriptive information designed to be processed by government and third-party search and directory systems. This internal descriptive data, intended to be read by computer systems rather than by humans, is referred to as metadata.
Government policy on the use of metadata in Internet publications is laid down in the e-Government Interoperability Framework available at: http://www.govtalk.gov.uk.
This mandates the use of metadata in government websites. It requires that metadata conforms to the e-Government Metadata Standard (e-GMS). e-GMS is based on the Dublin Core model produced by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI).
1.7.1 Checklist and summary: Core guidance
Checklist
Summary
Search engines and directory services are the primary tools for locating information on the Internet.
Metadata is key to categorising the information on your website: essentially it is data about data. Authors must insert e-GMS metadata markup elements at the top of an HTML document in order to categorise and describe the information contained within it.
1.7.2 Implementation of metadata
A web browser does not display metadata, but the machines accessing the page can assess and efficiently record data from it. Web crawlers, indexing agents, search facilities and web browsers can all interpret this information and use it to collate concise and relevant data on each page in the site.Metadata may also be added for administrative purposes, for example it is possible to add a ‘date for review’ indicating the date on which the information on a page is likely to require updating. Web administrators can then quickly and easily locate all pages that need reviewing at a given time, and ensure none of them are redundant or in need of updating.
Examples of pages using Dublin Core metadata include the e-Envoy website. Those responsible for the web strategy should consider creating a thesaurus of keywords and other terms for the same concepts. This will help
The international standard for the creation of a thesaurus is ISO 2788/BS 5723.
Important - The organisation’s library service will be the best internal resource for establishing a set of keywords for any specific area of publication. Their expertise in cataloguing and the use of thesauri will be invaluable.
The electronic cataloguing of web documents is undertaken chiefly to facilitate the finding of information. The greater the number of metadata elements used, the greater the chance of locating it.
The e-Government Metadata Standard (referred to in the e-Government Interoperability Framework) can be found at:
1.7.3 Getting your site listed on search engines and directories
The burgeoning number of Internet search engines and directories adopt a range of approaches for establishing their entries for the websites they catalogue. This may involve their using software (often referred to as crawlers or spiders) to scan either the text or the metadata (or both) contained within the pages of the site. It may involve having a human visit the site to catalogue it manually. Or it may involve both automated and human processes.
It is well worth consulting the Search Engine Report website to find out what criteria are used by the most widely used Internet search systems to create catalogue entries for the websites on which they hold information. It is sometimes the case that rearranging page content or restructuring your HTML markup will make a difference to a website’s search engine rankings.
Almost every Internet search engine and directory has a web page on which web managers can submit their website’s URL for inclusion in that search system’s catalogue. Some search and directory systems have a facility for the web manager to provide information about their site as a part of the submission process. The latter effectively constitutes another source of metadata (although only for the specific search or directory system to which the site URL is being submitted) and so the same care should be taken with the precision of any information entered in this way as with the creation of Dublin Core metadata.
Search engine and directory registration (or submission) can be done in one of two ways:
There are many different search facilities on the web and registering can be laborious and repetitive, so it is often advisable to have an external organisation to take responsibility for this task.
It can take anything up to several months from the time of submitting your website’s URL to a search engine or directory and the site appearing in that system’s catalogue.
Care should be taken with the use of automated services that offer to submit website URLs to multiple search engines. The operators of some search engines decline to accept registrations from such services. Some other purported such services are just an out-and-out scam.
Remember that not everyone uses the same search facility. The more services that the organisation is registered with, the better the chances are of reaching the largest audience. For websites containing content aimed at a specialist audience, it is often worth searching for directory services designed to serve the specialism at issue and registering your content with them.
If your organisation changes its operating name, website URL or its structure, it will be necessary to repeat the entire registration process again. Otherwise, it is likely the result of a search will be a broken link.
Tips on registering with search engines and the registration page URL of many popular search engines and directory sites can be found at:
1.7.4 Example of metadata
The order that these elements are placed on the page is unimportant but their location on the page is. Here is an example of how metadata details should be implemented within an HTML document:
<html>
<head>
<title>Department X Home Page</title>
<meta name="DC.Title" lang="en" content="Office of the e-Envoy - Home Page">
<meta name="DC.Coverage" lang="en" content="UK; United Kingdom">
<meta name=" DC.Creator" lang="en" content="UK Government Cabinet Office, Office of the e-Envoy, Stockley House, 130 Wilton Road, London SW1V 1LQ, UK. info@e-envoy.gsi.gov.uk">
<meta name="DC.Date.created" scheme="ISO8601" content="2001-04-25">
<meta name="DC.Date.modified" scheme="ISO8601" content="2001-10-31”>
<meta name=" DC.Description" lang="en" content="Part of the UK Cabinet Office, the OeE leads the drive to ensure that the country, its citizens and its businesses derive maximum benefit from the knowledge economy. It has responsibilities across the whole e-agenda, notably e-commerce and e-government.">
<meta name="DC.Format" scheme="IMT" content="text/html">
<meta name="DC.Identifier" scheme="URI" content="http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/">
<meta name="DC.language" scheme="ISO 639 2" content="eng">
<meta name="DC.Publisher" lang="en" content="e-Envoy Media">
<meta name="DC.Rights" lang="en" content=" http://www.hmso.gov.uk/docs/copynote.htm">
<meta name="DC.Subject" lang="en" content="OeE; Office of the e-Envoy; e-commerce; e-business; e-government; e-communications; e-objectives; business strategy; UK government policy">
<meta name="DC-GOV.Subject.Category" lang="en" content="e-government">
<meta name="DC.Type.category" lang="en" content="home page">
<meta name="keywords" content="="UK Public Sector, UK online, Websites, Defence, Civil Service">
<meta name="description" content="The Office of the e-Envoy, as part of the Cabinet Office is tasked with delivering the UK Government’s e-agenda">
</head>
This example shows that the metadata is inserted in the HTML page directly following the end tag for the <:title> element and within the
element.The example data uses content values for illustrative purposes only.
1.7.4.1 PICS rating
Government websites should also contain additional metadata markup indicating the site contents Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) rating. The purpose of PICS ratings metadata is different to that of Dublin Core metadata in that it categorises Internet content according to its suitability for viewing by a number of specific audience groups. PICS has been incorporated within the e-Government Metadata Standard.
This area is covered in specific detail in the next section.
Go to section 1.8 Platform for Internet Content Selection
1.7.5 Promoting your website
Your organisation should consider the following additional techniques to draw visitors to the website:
Your organisation should also consider the following: