Abstract:
With the increasing use of geographical information and technology in a variety of
knowledge domains and disciplines, the need to discover and access suitable geospatial data
is imperative. Most spatial data infrastructures (SDI) provide geoportals as entry points to the
SDI through which geospatial data are disseminated and shared. Geoportals are often known in
geoinformation communities only, and they present technological challenges for indexing by web
search engines. To overcome these challenges, we identified and categorized search terms typically
employed by users when looking for geospatial resources on the Web. Guided by these terms,
we published metadata about geospatial sources “directly” on the Web and performed empirical
tests with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Two sets of HTML pages were prepared and
registered with Google and Bing respectively. The metadata in one set was marked up with Dublin
Core, the other with Schema.org. Analysis of the results shows that Google was more effective than
Bing in retrieving the pages. Pages marked up with Schema.org were more effectively retrieved
than those marked up with Dublin Core. The statistical results were significant in most of the tests
performed. This research confirms that pages marked up with Schema.org and Dublin Core are a
novel alternative for improving the visibility and facilitating the discovery of geospatial resources on
the Web.
