Where Meaning and Performance Come Together on the Web
Developers are fond of saying that semantic markup is not about performance it’s about meaning, and they’re usually right. Properly implemented semantic markup applied to web pages enhances their meaning and makes them more readable to search engines but does not change how they perform. Throw cars in the mix however and performance takes on an entirely new meaning…
Car manufacturers use a variety of ways to describe their vehicles. With car parts made in different parts of the world and assembled locally to where they’re sold descriptions regarding parts, accessories and even vehicle performance can change considerably in the language used. It becomes even harder to describe the similarities or the differences in cars made by different manufacturers. This makes it confusing for search that does not always understand the language used on a webpage and difficult for consumers to draw direct comparisons or even find what they are looking for easily in the first place.
All of this now is about to change. In what may be a real game changer in the way cars are bought on the web MakoLab culminated more than a year-long effort by having Google and the W3C web standards foundation accept its proposal for the new semantic markup that can now be applied to automotive pages on the web. Working with Dr Martin Hepp, professor at the Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich, MakoLab formed the Automotive Ontologies Working Group where, thanks to its long association with European car manufacturers, it brought its own expertise of automotive industry requirements to help formulate the new schema.