1. Does metadata count? A Webometric investigation Alastair G Smith School of Information Management Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand Alastair.Smith@vuw.ac.nz

2. Overview n Can value of metadata be demonstrated? n Web Impact Factor (WIF) as a measure of site’s effectiveness n Does WIF correlate to extent of metadata use? n Exploratory study of electronic journals and NZ university websites n Estimates of extent of metadata use

3. Value of metadata n Seen by LIM community as an aid to retrieval n Mixed use by search engines: u potential for spamming u Meta keywords used by AltaVista & Inktomi, not by FAST or Google n Low rate of use on Web (0.3% DC metadata) n Often not used effectively

4. Investigating metadata effectiveness n Compare retrieval with/ without metadata u Henshaw and Valauskas compared search engine retrieval and ranking before & after addition of metadata u No impact found n Compare impact factor of websites

5. Web Impact Factor (WIF) n Analogous to Journal Impact Factor n Measure of influence/reputation of website n Ratio of u links to a website u pages at website n Can be measured using AltaVista searches  link: for links to site  host: or url: for pages at site

6. Electronic Journals n 33 E-journals used n AltaVista searches to find u Number of pages u Number of links u Proportion of links to substantive content u Proportion of pages with F Any metadata F DC metadata

7. Average WIFs for E- Journals Average WIF for no metadata 6.71 Average WIF with metadata 4.27 Average WIF with DC metadata 5.33 Little evidence that metadata affects WIF

8. Slight negative correlation between amount of metadata and WIF

9. Substantive WIF n Ratio of u links to substantive content e.g. articles u pages at website

10. Average substantive WIFs for E-Journals Average subst WIF with no metadata1.46 Average subst WIF with metadata1.90 Average subst WIF with DC metadata2.77

11. Not a good correlation with use of metadata in general

12. Some correlation between substantive WIF and DC metadata (but a small sample)

13. Proportion of pages in e-journals that use metadata % pages with metadata19.61 % pages with DC metadata2.94 Cf. Lawrence and Giles estimate of 0.3% of sites using DC metadata

14. NZ University Websites n 8 universities studied n “substantive WIF” not estimated n Proportion of pages with metadata similar to E-journals: % pages with metadata16.86 % pages with DC metadata4.35

15. Somewhat positive relationship between WIF and overall metadata use

16. Amount of metadata use n Relatively small amount of metadata use but is more than Lawrence and Giles found u Usage increasing? u Universities and e-journals likely to have more metadata?

17. Does metadata affect WIF? n Mixed results from this exploratory study n E-journals: u Substantive WIF and amount of DC metadata positively related n NZ universities: u Amount of general metadata and WIF positively related

18. Conclusions n Critical mass of metadata? n Will presence of metadata act as a “quality filter”? n Will search engines use metadata? n Need for more research to evaluate usefulness of metadata