A study of the metadata creation behavior of different user groups on the Internet

Metadata is designed to improve information organization and information retrieval effectiveness and efficiency on the Internet. The way web publishers respond to metadata and the way they use it when publishing their web pages, however, is still a mystery. The authors of this paper aim to solve this mystery by defining different professional publisher groups, examining the behaviors of these user groups, and identifying the characteristics of their metadata use. This study will enhance the current understanding of metadata application behavior and provide evidence useful to researchers, web publishers, and search engine designers.