Resources of a Resource (ROR) is an XML format for describing the content of an internet resource or website in a generic fashion so this content can be better understood by search engines, spiders, web applications, etc. The ROR format provides several pre-defined terms for describing objects like sitemaps, products, events, reviews, jobs, classifieds, etc. The format can be extended with custom terms.
RORweb.com is the official website of ROR; the ROR format was created by AddMe.com as a way to help search engines better understand content and meaning. Similar concepts, like Google Sitemaps and Google Base, have also been developed since the introduction of the ROR format.
ROR objects are placed in an ROR feed called ror.xml. This file is typically located in the root directory of the resource or website it describes. When a search engine like Google or Yahoo searches the web to determine how to categorize content, the ROR feed allows the search engines "spider" to quickly identify all the content and attributes of the website.
It allows the spider to correctly categorize the content of the website into its engine.
It allows the website owner to optimize his site for inclusion of its content into the search engines.
"You may have seen stories today reporting on a new product that we're testing, and speculating about our plans. Here's what's really going on. We are testing a new way for content owners to submit their content to Google, which we hope will complement existing methods such as our web crawl and Google Sitemaps. We think it's an exciting product, and we'll let you know when there's more news."Files can be uploaded to the Google Base servers by browsing your computer or the web, by various FTP methods, or by API coding. Online tools are provided to view the number of downloads of the user's files, and other performance measures.
On December 17, 2010, it was announced that Google Base's API is deprecated in favor of a set of new APIs known as Google Shopping APIs.
The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more efficiently and to find URLs that may be isolated from rest of the site's content. The sitemaps protocol is a URL inclusion protocol and complements robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.