Structured Data - A deep dive into its history, myths, and future

Structured Data – A deep dive into its history, myths, and future

Jarno van Driel

Structured Data – a term describing a technology SEO specialists have been using successfully for many years – without knowing much about its history, its application beyond Search and Social, or how a vocabulary like schema.org came to be and continues to evolve.

Which effectively is an ode to those who managed to convince the world to start using a technology that is abstract, technical, and even involves philosophy. An effort that led to a whopping 50% of the open web now containing (some) semantic metadata – by keeping things relatively simple.

A simplicity that shows itself in the type of structured data markup advocated by companies like Google, Bing, and Meta. Markup that only utilizes parts of the W3C specifications surrounding Linked Open Data, and by doing so made the technology more accessible to all – but at a cost.

Things often fail when one dares to go beyond their documentation. Sometimes because people lack the technical knowledge they need, other times because people take things out of context – falsely believing they found the next big thing in schema.org, or that they’ve mastered some obscure secret about Semantic SEO others don’t know about.

In his talk, Jarno van Driel will take you on a voyage through time, starting at the beginning of the World Wide Web, up into the present day, and onward into the future. He’ll be making stops along the way to illustrate, explain, and debunk some of the myths, misconceptions, and beliefs about the pros and cons of Semantic Metadata.

Jarno van Driel

Structured Data ConsultantUndisclosed

Jarno van Driel is an international Structured Data and Semantic SEO consultant who started his career in 1998. Since then Jarno has continuously embraced new roles, leading him to discover his passion is optimizing content and code so that machines can understand and utilize the information websites provide.

Jarno’s activities can be categorized and classified into many different taxonomies and ontologies. Yet labeling Jarno’s job title is a near-impossible task because his activities overlap with a multitude of departments and specialists. An ambiguous state, because of which most simply know him as ‘just Jarno’, that structured-data fanboy from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

As an early adopter of Linked Open Data, Jarno’s work was mentioned in several W3C discussion groups. Mentions that would lead him to start participating in shaping some of the standards many people use (microdata, schema.org). All the while learning from many of the pioneers who are at the forefront of the semantic technologies being used today.