To explore the impact of using metadata in finding and ranking web pages through search engines.
The study has been divided into two phases. In phase one, the use of metadata schemes and the impact of overlapped documents have been examined by employing the usability technique. Phase two examined the impact of adding metadata elements to web pages in their original rank order, using the experimental method. This study focuses on indexing web pages using metadata and its impact on search engine's rankings.
Meta tags are more widely used than Dublin Core. The overlapped pages tend to include metadata. The second phase shows that by adding metadata elements to web pages, it raises its rank order. However, this depends on the quality of the description and the metadata schemes. The study shows no great difference in page ranking between adding meta tags and Dublin Core.
To maximize the impact of metadata, more attention should be given to keyword and descriptive fields.
The hypothetical relationship between overlapped pages and the inclusion of metadata and indexing by search engines had not been previously examined.
