ROR files

where did they come from

[drewst]

Anybody using them yet? how effective are they and what search engines use them?

more info can be found here
[rorweb.com...]

THanks

Drew

[domv]

ROR is a simple format for describing your website in a generic fashion, so that search engines and other web applications can find and discover information more easily. By default ROR information is stored in a ROR file called ror.xml placed in your website's main directory. The location and name of the file can also be documented with a link tag in your main page).

ROR is a bit like a business card for your website. And that card can contain as much information as you want about your website (contact, address, feeds, articles, products, discounts, images, events, etc). You can even provide reviews of other websites.

With ROR you are in control of your data; it lives on YOUR website. You no longer need to worry about re-submitting information each time something changes on your website (new information, new products or prices changes, contact or address change, etc). You no longer need to keep track of where to submit that information to and in what format.

You can also think of ROR as a master-feed with all your website data and metadata in it, organized in a tree-like structure. Shopping search engines focus on your product section, news search engines focus on your news feed section, etc, local search engines grab your contact section, and general search engines read everything including your sitemap section. And if you have a large website you can generate your ROR file from your website database on a regular basis.

Several search engines (small and large) are showing interest in or preparing to read ROR files already. We think ROR will soon have a significant impact on SEO.

What are your thoughts? Do you like the idea?

Thanks,

<snip>

[edited by: trillianjedi at 11:30 pm (utc) on April 28, 2005]
[edit reason] No URL's in sigs please. [/edit]

[trillianjedi]

What are your thoughts?

I'm not sure that I can see how this will succeed where META descriptors failed?

Do you like the idea?

In an ideal world, but I think the last thing any large scale SE would do right now is to put organisation and description of data back into the hands of the webmaster.

TJ

[domv]

I'm not sure that I can see how this will succeed where META descriptors failed?

In an ideal world, but I think the last thing any large scale SE would do right now is to put organisation and description of data back into the hands of the webmaster.

Hi TJ,

Thanks for bringing this up. Some meta descriptors did fail, not all. But they are comming back with a vengeance. In fact they are now spreading like weeds. The success of RSS, which is essentially Metadata, and the growing adoption of Dublin Core are indications of that. The Web is evolving into the Semantic Web (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/), it's happening.

Everyone, please share your thoughts on this important topic!

Thanks,

-domv