Study on the Effect of Discarding XML Declaration and Changing the File Extension on Increasing the Index ability and Visibility of Metadata Records in the Web Search Engines Environment

This research was conducted to examine the effect of discarding XML declaration and changing the file extension on increasing the index ability and visibility of the element tag names of metadata records based on DCXML, MARCXML, and MODS in the Web search engines environment.
Two groups of metadata records (300 XML-based records as the control group with the normal structure, and 300 XML-based records without XML declaration and with the extension according to the name of related metadata standard in an experimental group) were analyzed through the experimental approach. Two independent websites assigned to each studied group, and they were introduced to Google and Yahoo search engines. Subsequently, using element-based search strategies, the index ability and visibility of the published metadata records on those websites were examined.
Findings: Findings showed that Google and Yahoo indexed all the elements of tagged names of the metadata records relating to the experimental group indexes, and presented them in their search results. But the elements of tagged names in the control group’s metadata records were not indexed by the search engines.
Based on this study, it is possible to retrieve the experimental group's metadata records by their element of tagged names in the search engines. But the records of the control group are accessible by the values of the element only. In the end, , some patterns were suggested to the metadata creators and the search engine developers.