I recently cam accross the content classification theory of Topic Mapping. This new ISO standard of content classification appears to be another attempt to map content in a 3 dimensional structure rather than a hierarchy.

From what I have read so far, topic mapping attempts to link ideas or "topics" to other topics by links called "associations". That bit seems simple enough, but then you can give the relationship itself a "topic" and topics can also be defined as types of other topics. Alongside that topics can be linked to actual bits of content and these relationships are known as occurences.

These three elements, topics, associations and occurences (the TAO of topic maps) can the fundamental building blocks of getting your content relational, and will enable you to view content from different angles.

For example, lets say Woolworths website (which I was involved in building in about 2000) has a number of categories and subcategories for it’s products. We are looking for paper plates for a kids party, so we have to go into:

Household products -> kitchen -> party goods -> paper cups

now we want to go looking for birthday cake candles, so we have to navigate through a different section of the hierarchy completely to find them.

With topic maps, both candles and paper cups would be linked together as topics through the association "kids parties", allowing all the products that are needed for a kids party to be displayed on the same page.

Topic maps can be used to drive content like this or to drive special offers like buy one get one free etc. We are currently considering integrating topic maps into our CMS to enable content to be indexed in this way.

Does anyone have any experience of this specification or others that do a similar job? Any thougts?

For more info on topic maps go here:
http://www.topicmaps.org/
http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html
http://www.networkedplanet.com/

and our Content Management System (WebDeck):
http://www.solidstategroup.com

Cheers,

M@.

This is the way forward for internal search for companies as most internal search engines are very restricted and in some case just plain useless. This is a chance initially to improve the user experience in ways that have been thought about with personalisation only. The overheads are high to start with but the investment would be worth it and with an added advantage. If you are classifying your content better then I can see the potential of this adding value to external search engines as they will have a better idea what the content is about.  

On the face of it the whole thing seems really easy until you start looking into the depths topic maps allow you to go. It has the potential to cross sell relevant products for kiddies parties but also allows you to make and build associations and relationships, not only selling paper cups and candles but how about a massage for Mum or Dad to recover from the festivities. This is meta date on speed and for once the ISO standard has been written and accepted before everyone jumps on board. It is not a difficult standard to follow but I suspect it goes into too much depth for the novice or beginner. It still gives me a headache but it is also there to guide the future. 

Many companies are being to see the potential but I think that this is the most exciting developement to have happened to search in a long time in my opinion. This is more, much more than just content classification.

Tina

On 10:06:08 4 May 2005 Ashley wrote:

Hi Matt

I don’t have any experience of any of these standards as such, but what you are talking about is just (topic) metadata isn’t it? The right metadata will depend on the business and its customers (both internal and external).

You talk about product categories but you might also, for example, want to include thematic groupings (like the ’kids parties’ you mention) or, indeed, customer segment groupings / metadata (e.g. all content that we have that is relevant to ’club class’ customers).

Where I think these groupings get interesting is where they are used in a smart way for things like personalisation or, as we have found, search engine optimisation. You can use topic categories, for example, as an excellent (and easy) way to group and link your site’s content thematically which does wonders for you search engine rankings as well as being good for users.

We’ve experimented with variations on this topic categorisation theme. For example, we automatically link certain key phrases (like content management, or web analytics ) to relevant content pages on the site to help direct users, and search engine spiders, through in-page text links which are topic-related. Works a dream...

Ashley   

On 15:09:19 3 May 2005 solidstate wrote:

I recently cam accross the content classification theory of Topic Mapping. This new ISO standard of content classification appears to be another attempt to map content in a 3 dimensional structure rather than a hierarchy.

From what I have read so far, topic mapping attempts to link ideas or "topics" to other topics by links called "associations". That bit seems simple enough, but then you can give the relationship itself a "topic" and topics can also be defined as types of other topics. Alongside that topics can be linked to actual bits of content and these relationships are known as occurences.

These three elements, topics, associations and occurences (the TAO of topic maps) can the fundamental building blocks of getting your content relational, and will enable you to view content from different angles.

For example, lets say Woolworths website (which I was involved in building in about 2000) has a number of categories and subcategories for it’s products. We are looking for paper plates for a kids party, so we have to go into:

Household products -> kitchen -> party goods -> paper cups

now we want to go looking for birthday cake candles, so we have to navigate through a different section of the hierarchy completely to find them.

With topic maps, both candles and paper cups would be linked together as topics through the association "kids parties", allowing all the products that are needed for a kids party to be displayed on the same page.

Topic maps can be used to drive content like this or to drive special offers like buy one get one free etc. We are currently considering integrating topic maps into our CMS to enable content to be indexed in this way.

Does anyone have any experience of this specification or others that do a similar job? Any thougts?

For more info on topic maps go here:
http://www.topicmaps.org/
http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html
http://www.networkedplanet.com/

and our Content Management System (WebDeck):
http://www.solidstategroup.com

Cheers,

M@.