Empirical analysis of domain ontology usage on the Web: eCommerce domain in focus

Abstract

SUMMARYIn the recent past, there has been an exponential growth in Resource Description Framework data on the web known as web of data. The emergence of the web of data is transforming the existing web from a document‐sharing medium to a decentralized knowledge platform for publishing and sharing information between humans and computers. To enable common understanding between different users, domain ontologies are being developed and deployed to annotate information on the web. This semantically annotated information is then accessed by machines to extract and aggregate information, on the basis of the underlying ontologies used. To effectively and efficiently access data on the web, insight into the usage of ontology is pivotal, because this assists users in experiencing the benefits offered by the Semantic Web. However, such an approach has not been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we present a pragmatic approach to the analysis of domain ontology usage on the web. We propose metrics to measure the use of domain ontology constructs on the web from different aspects. To comprehensively understand the usage patterns of conceptual knowledge, instance data, and ontology co‐usability, we considered GoodRelations ontology as the domain ontology and built a dataset by collecting structured data from 211 web‐based data sources that have published information using the domain ontology. The dataset is analyzed by using the proposed metrics and observations along with their usability and applicability to the different users of the Semantic Web. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.