Designing Authority Data Properties Based on Microdata Method and Study of Web Search Engines’ Reaction to Them

The purpose of this research was to study the Search Engine’s responses to authority data properties embedded into schema.org-based metadata on the Microdata syntax.

The experimental method was used in this research. The research population comprised 400 records of authority metadata based on the Microdata method from the digital library of Allameh Tabataba'i University. The examination group consisted of 200 metadata records, 100 records with authority data extensions embedded into schema.org-based metadata in the Microdata syntax and 100 other similar records in the JSON-LD syntax (50 samples of name authority, and 50 other subject authority) And the control group consisted of 200 Records, including 100 Records related to the description of the book in the Microdata syntax and 100 other similar records in the JSON-LD syntax. The records have been published on the independent website at www.Aghadeh.ir and have been introduced to the Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex search engines as designers of the schema.org standard. Then, through searching the search engines, using the data gathering tool, the checklist provided by the researchers, the indexing and retrieval of the metadata records of the control groups and experimental groups were evaluated in the search results of the selected search engines.

The results of this study showed that search engines were able to index and retrieve all of the metadata records and values of added extensions associated with authority data. Such a possibility had the same status for the name authority records and the subject authority data.

By retrieving each of the variant properties’ values of examination group’s records, in addition to the authorized values of the name and subject terms, a suitable platform for the comprehensiveness of the retrieve process, and the authority control in the Web search tools will be improved.