Overview

Information published on the web should be optimized for discovery by search engines.

Why

Difficulty of finding data limits achievement of the goals of publishing public-sector information. Discovery of data on the web by human readers can best be achieved through search engines.

Intended Outcome

Published information can easily be found using web search engines.

Possible Approach

Public sector bodies publishing information on the Web SHOULD publish it in a form that aids discovery by search engines. There are a number of established techniques for doing this, including:

• Submitting pages to commonly-used search engines to speed up their detection and indexing
• Ensuring that the pages in question are the targets of links from a number of other pages, and that the chains of links to the pages from home pages are short
• Considering which search terms are likely to be used, and ensuring that they appear in the text on the pages
• Including appropriate descriptions and keywords in the page headers.

Public sector bodies publishing information on the Web SHOULD consider search-engine optimization advice published by search-engine operators and available from other sources when determining their publication format and content.

Search-engine optimization techniques SHOULD be applied to web data that is intended to be interpreted by computers, as well as to pages intended for reading by humans. Humans often identify sources of data for computer processing.

How to Test

Discoverability of information CAN be tested by submitting appropriate search terms to commonly-used search engines and measuring how near the pages in question are to the top of the list of discovered pages.

Evidence

Several presentations and discussions at the Samos SHARE-PSI workshop mentioned the problem of finding information.

The Open Public Sector Data Business Scenario identifies optimization for search engines as a requirement.

Lifecycle Stage

Planning and publication.

Audience

Everyone responsible for the creation or publication of public-sector information.

Related Best Practices

(To be added once the list of best practices is complete.)