Web indexing

Web indexing (or Internet indexing ) includes back-of-book-style indexes to individual World Wide Webs or an Intranet, and the creation of keyword Metadata (computing) to provide a more useful vocabulary for Internet or onsite search engines. With the increase in the number of periodicals that have articles online, web indexing is also becoming important for periodical websites.

Back-of-the-book-style web indexes may be called web site A-Z indexes. The implication with A-Z is that there is an alphabetical browse view or interface. This interface differs from that of a browse through layers of hierarchical categories (also known as a taxonomy) which are not necessarily alphabetical, but are also found on some web sites. The A-Z index is also different from a index that involves a search box. Even if terms entered into the search box are matched against a a human-created index, thesaurus, or controlled vocabulary, these terms are not visible to the user, and therefore it is not browsable. Although an A-Z index could be used to index multiple sites, rather than the multiple pages of a single site, this is rare. When multiple sites are organized, they tend to be categorized, rather than put into alphabetical indexes.

Metadata (computing) web indexing involves assigning keywords or phrases to web pages or web sites within a meta-tag field, so that the web page or web site can be retrieved with a search engine that is customized to search the keywords field. This may or may not involve using keywords restricted to a controlled vocabulary list.

=See also=

*Index (publishing) *Information architecture *Search engine *Search engine optimization

=External links=

*[http://www.web-indexing.org Web Indexing Special Interest Group] *[http://www.asindexing.org/site/webndx.shtml American Society of Indexers page on Indexing the Web] *[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/web-indexing/ Web Indexing Special Interest Yahoo Groups]