Semantic Web
A vision for extending the World Wide Web so that data is machine-readable and interconnected through shared standards and ontologies. It enables automated reasoning and knowledge discovery.
Why It Matters
The Semantic Web provides the structured data layer that modern AI and search engines rely on. Schema.org and structured data directly impact SEO.
Example
Using JSON-LD markup on a website so search engines understand that a page describes a 'Product' with a 'price' of $29.99 and 'rating' of 4.5 stars.
Think of it like...
Like translating websites from human-only language to a format that machines can also understand — the same information, but structured so computers can reason about it.
Related Terms
Knowledge Graph
A structured representation of real-world entities and the relationships between them, stored as a network of nodes (entities) and edges (relationships). Knowledge graphs capture factual information in a machine-readable format.
Ontology
A formal representation of knowledge within a domain that defines concepts, categories, properties, and the relationships between them. It provides a shared vocabulary and structure for organizing information.