---
title: "Pingback and embedded metadata in (X)HTML"
date: 2002-09-28T16:29:13-04:00
url: https://blog.lmorchard.com/2002/09/28/ooocoo/
author: Les Orchard
---

# Pingback and embedded metadata in (X)HTML

More on Pingback vs <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/TrackBack">TrackBack</a> on <a href="http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1033171507&amp;count=1">Hixie's Natural Log</a>.
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How embarassing - he points to my referrers as a typical list.  :)  Mine are crap.  Look at <a href="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/09/27.html#pingback_vs_trackback">how Mark Pilgrim handles referrers</a>.  Yesterday I was working at making my referrer tracking harvest titles, clean out false links, and collapse redundant backlinks, but I'm far from perfecting that.  But, at the same time, I agree:  Referrers are <strong>not</strong> enough.  They're one source, the most noise-ridden but the most effortless on the part of the outside contributor.  But you can only do so much with almost nothing.  :)
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I think, when it comes down to it, my <strong>only</strong> issue with Pingback is not a Pingback-specific issue at all:  How to harvest machine readable metadata from a web resource.  This applies to my referrer links, Pingback, and <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/TrackBack">TrackBack</a> alike.  <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/TrackBack">TrackBack</a> has a bit of a solution, with embedded <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/RDF">RDF</a>, but that's got its own issues.  <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/news_archives/000292.phtml#comments">Ian suggests</a> a few things to me in comments, such as harvesting the title from the HTML title tag (a no brainer), and then harvesting further data from <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/DublinCore">DublinCore</a>-based data in meta tags in the page.  I've seen this last convention only once before, in the geographical data <a href="http://www.syndic8.com/help_metadata.php">consumed by Syndic8.com</a>.
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Is this a pretty common convention?  I've not seen it done much, but the I obviously have not seen everything or a large chunk of anything.  :)  If this is a known convention, it makes me happy and I think it would answer <a href="http://www.decafbad.com/news_archives/000142.phtml#000142">a question I asked back in May</a>.
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<strong>Update:</strong>  Duh.  Yes, it's a known convention.  It's even got an RFC:  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2731.txt">RFC2731: Encoding Dublin Core Metadata in HTML</a>  Simple Google search.  Sometimes I can be so daft.  :)  Now I just have to start using this more - and I wonder why more people aren't using it?  Most likely because there's been not much in it for them.
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