where ya goin’ mate?

All data on the web is easily read by humans; however computers don’t understand much without our input and need to be informed. Therefore to assist with data extrapolation and re-population of publicly available information across the internet and browsers, clever humans developed the descriptive microformat extension to html elements. In essence, it’s a not too dissimilar to a data extracting pac-man munching away at points of reference and then performing a re-gurgitation of that data elsewhere for searching and cross-referencing by other software to be distributed in various forms. Let’s look at some real-world examples: Need to update your address book or calendar? Need to tally up a poll? Need GPS co-ordinates for bird-watching? Need to find an audio file on the website? Need to locate that address on the website? Need to locate the actual recipe on a cooking site? Well, microformats do all that for you through semantic mark-up in the form of hcards, hcalendar, haudio, hrecipe amongst many others. As a read only function, your website offers up the microformat service seamlessly to other software and search engines. Microformats provide for accessibility through screen reader abilities to pull data and travel that data automatically.  Without microformatted html a considerable amount of your needful information data may not be read properly, or read at all for accessibility requirement and this could hinder your website SERP outcome and user experience.

When embarking on digital travel, don’t forget your microformat passport.