The business world seems to be more and more obsessed with tracking metadata. Metadata, if you don’t already know, is data about data. For example, a digital image may include metadata that describes how large the picture is, the color depth, the image resolution, when the image was created, the shutter speed, and other data. A text document’s metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document was written, and a short summary of the document. Metadata within web pages can also contain descriptions of page content, as well as key words linked to the content.
Mostly, these days, though, metadata is used to track how many people have visited a website in a certain period of time, how much time they spent on that website, and whether or not they purchased something. Continue reading →