What is metadata?

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Metadata is a collective name for higher level information about a Web page, a person, a book or any other item, which tells you something more about it. A library catalogue is an example of metadata; each record tells you the title, author and subject of a book. Other examples include a person's social security code, telephone number or payroll identifier.

Metadata are used to classify and index things, so people can find out about them quickly and easily. By recording category, name and time data, it becomes possible to search for items that are associated with a particular topic, whose names contain a certain word, or were created on a specific date.

Metadata about Web pages are usually recorded in meta elements, as below, and a single Web page may contain many different metadata statements.

<meta name="subject"
 content="Norwich City Football Club"/>
      

See also:

• What is a meta element?
• What is RSS?