61–70 of 94 posts
We have semantic HTML, but for some weird reason we need to yet again re-express the semantic meaning of our website in bespoke weird JSON in a script tag that the browser won't process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want a world where the data you present like this matters, seed it. Even if google doesn't use it, the collective internet applying this kind of metadata makes the web fertile for non-LLM-scraping competitors to provide an alternative option. Rolling over to google only ensures that they remain dominant, with a high bar for competitors, and driving them to use the same technologies.
Like other commenters have said, this is 25 years too late, and it's made even more irrelevant by modern tech. "The Semantic Web" and all related ideas were always a failure. The metadata quickly got out of date, was never correct in the first place, was only ever implemented on a teeny minority of sites, and always suffered from bad actors where the metadata didn't match the content. Heck, even before LLMs I'd argue…
But when webpages die and data is accessed only by machine2machine APIs, we will no longer have this formatting for humans. Then we will need API-literate LLMs. Which means LLMs that can connect the dots between shitloads of unconnected JSONs. And if we don’t hint it for which connections are existing between that chaos of APIs, it will not be able to apply its magic. In short: we need to be able to bring JSON to vector space. And it is absolutely not meant for that, by default.
Do these attributes actually help with search engine visibility or do they just make it easier for search engines to keep users from leaving the search page? Honest question here.
I would encourage people who have the pragmatic bent to read about JSON-LD from the Google documentation for web sites; https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structu... You’ll also notice that a lot of the information is relevant to only a small subset of sites. Rotten Tomatoes can publish the critic rating for movies using JSON-LD, but that’s not relevant for me (even if I write a review for a movie).…
AFAIK only gmail supports it, though.
EDIT: some more info about it: https://www.emailonacid.com/blog/article/email-development/s...
> It can aid web crawlers in understanding the semantic structure of your site, qualifying you for richer link previews, and even potentially improving your search ranking. This is fighting the last war, to stretch a metaphor. As far as I and my WWW site are concerned, Google has nowadays switched to giving people lengthy LLM-generated versions of my stuff, with errors, above pointing people to my actual stuff. 'Brea…
an $STATE-based IT firm that specializes in building practical AI workflows and information management solutions for midwestern businesses. Operating with an agile, fixed-fee engagement model, the company focuses on avoiding enterprise bloat while delivering concrete results.
It then mixes in the name of a competitor with a similar (but certainly not the same) business name, and lists me as a principal. On the plus side, it only lists our contact info since the other people have their contact info hidden behind a "book an engagement" form.
> It can aid web crawlers in understanding the semantic structure of your site, qualifying you for richer link previews, and even potentially improving your search ranking. This is fighting the last war, to stretch a metaphor. As far as I and my WWW site are concerned, Google has nowadays switched to giving people lengthy LLM-generated versions of my stuff, with errors, above pointing people to my actual stuff. 'Brea…
Yeah, I don't even permit Google to crawl and index my site any more.