Usefulness of structure to third-party applications -- looking beyond Google

After the recent workshop, I spoke to Erik Arnold at DigitalGov Search (DGS), who applauded the efforts of the Content Model group but pointed out (again) that because the DGS service doesn’t parse web content, they can’t directly use the markup to improve their search results. He suggested that the only player able to do that would be Google.

However, if the metadata is aggregated into a structured file, they can use it – and presumably the metadata becomes more useful to other third party processes. I’m interested if others are packaging their metadata and if that makes it more useful to other users?

A theme I heard at the workshop was how to sell structured content to management. Our markup may or may not improve Google search results for our content, but it may be hard to point to as a clear benefit.

I think we stand a better chance of demonstrating the value of structured content if we can package the metadata and point to third party apps that can consume it. In other words, markup is the first step, but an important second step is aggregation.

Thoughts?

-- Bob Rand, SEC