Comparing the Function of Web Search Engines in Indexing and Making Visible of the Metadata Records based on Microdata Method

The aim of this research was to find out the function of Web search engines in indexing and Making visible of the metadata records based on Microdata method comparatively. Research 200 metadata records in two groups: 100 HTML-based metadata records (related to e-books) as the control group with the normal structure, including 50 records in Persian and 50 records in English, and 100 HTML metadata records created based on Microdata method in Persian and English in an experimental group. All records were extracted from Allameh Tabataba’i university digital library and were analyzed through an experimental approach. The records of two groups were published on an independent website http://www.szolghadr.ir, and were introduced to Google, Bing and Yahoo! search engines. Then using advanced search strategies, the semantic indexability and visibility of the published metadata records were examined. Findings show Google got indexed both control and experimental groups’ records, and displayed the metadata records of the experimental group semantically, as rich snippets. But Bing and Yahoo! search engines got indexed the records of both groups only and were not able to make visible them in their search results semantically. Although, the three studied search engines have been developing schema.org together and use Microdata method for creating metadata records based on it, only Google supports to display the two groups’ metadata records semantically.