Semantic means the meaning of. It has to do with what things mean. So the semantic of something is the meaning of that thing.

To human eyes the meaning of a link on the web might be self explanatory. It might be obvious that that a link to “What is The Big Web FAQ?” is going to take you to a definition of this site.

To a computer however, it is just a bunch of letters in the same way that Chinese is just a bunch of symbols to an Englishman.

The Semantic Web is where relationships such as links, are defined in a way that a computer can understand. In the previous example the simple word “definition” would tell a computer that the link takes us to a definition of what this website is about.

More than just links, the Semantic Web describes the relationships between things such as time, weight, distance, definition, popularity. Anything really.

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