The project was undertaken to  assess  the current standards for semantic "markup", i.e. different ways of including semantic information in the source code (the (X)HTML code), and make recommendations for use in FjordNett-platform (FjordNett is Fjord Norway’s platform for running web sites in the region such as www.fjordnorway.com, www.sognefjord.no etc.)

Tourism related Web pages contain inbuilt structured and significant data like contact details, dates and addresses of events, descriptive elements for photos and much more. This data is expressed in a way that is easily understandable for humans but difficult to detect and interpret for machines. By enhancing existing Web pages with semantics we allow machines to categorise and handle information, so it can be used in a much more practical way, yet keep the principles of the existing web and still code for humans first. In addition, semantic markup gives the ability to make more information available to the search engines, in a format that is more easily understood, semantically. That’s a major plus, from a relevancy standpoint; and thus providing more information to entice the user to visit Fjord Norway’s website.

In the project report, major approaches are explained, exploring their strengths and weaknesses, providing examples, and touching on future considerations for FjordNett.