Despite this, references to the term appear in academic papers that predate Myers' claim.

Myers filed a trademark for the unhyphenated word 'metadata' in 1986. Myers, founder of Metadata Information Partners (now The Metadata Co.), claims to have coined the term in 1969. The maturity of AI technologies is somewhat easing the traditional burden of managing metadata by automating previously manual processes to catalog and tag information assets. For example, streaming content providers automate the management of intellectual property metadata so it can be stored across an array of applications, thus protecting copyright holders while at the same time making music and videos accessible to authenticated users. The language of metadata is written to be understandable to both computer systems and humans, a level of standardization that contributes to better interoperability and integration between disparate applications and information systems.Ĭompanies in digital publishing, engineering, financial services, healthcare and manufacturing use metadata to gather insights on ways to improve products or upgrade processes. As noted, search engines and browsers determine which web content to display by interpreting the metadata tags associated with an HTML document. It also enables objects that are dissimilar to be identified and paired with like objects to help optimize the use of data assets. Metadata organizes a data object by using terms associated with that particular object. Accurate metadata can be helpful in prolonging the lifespan of existing data by helping users find new ways to apply it. Metadata is created anytime a document, a file or other information asset is modified, including its deletion. Automated metadata creation can be much more elementary, usually only displaying information such as file size, file extension, when the file was created and who created the file. Manual creation tends to be more accurate, allowing the user to input any information they feel is relevant or that would help describe the file. Metadata can be created manually or by automated information processing. Many search engines also try to thwart web pages' ability to deceive their system by regularly changing their criteria for rankings, with Google being notorious for frequently changing its ranking algorithms. Since then, search engines have reduced their reliance on meta tags, although they are still factored in when indexing pages. The increase in search engine optimization ( SEO) towards the end of the 1990s led to many websites to keyword stuffing their metadata to trick search engines, making their websites seem more relevant than others. Meta tags were used as the key factor in determining position in a search until the late 1990s. Search engines evaluate meta tags to help decide a web page's relevance. This information is usually expressed in the form of meta tags.

This metadata is often displayed in search results by search engines, meaning its accuracy and details could influence whether or not a user decides to visit a site. The metadata contains descriptions of the page's contents, as well as keywords linked to the content.

The use of metadata on web pages can be very important. In addition to document files, metadata is used for: Having the ability to search for a particular element (or elements) of that metadata makes it much easier for someone to locate a specific document. Meta is a prefix that - in most information technology usages - means 'an underlying definition or description.' Metadata summarizes basic information about data, which can make it easier to find, use and reuse particular instances of data.įor example, author, date created, date modified and file size are examples of very basic document file metadata. Warren describes metadata as 'both a universe and DNA.' In Zen and the Art of Metadata Maintenance, John W.

Often referred to as data that describes other data, metadata is structured reference data that helps to sort and identify attributes of the information it describes.

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