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Here’s a great little video that explains how the web is changing into something called the semantic web. You may have heard the word, but not know what it means. And that is exactly how search engines work today: they get the keyword, but they don’t know what it means. The semantic web is smarter: search engines will understand and deliver more of what you are really asking for when you perform a search. Learn why the XBRL format is considered one of the semantic web’s best tools.

This six-minute presentation was made for non-technical web users to get the basic idea behind the semantic web. The original World Wide Web solved the problem of how to find and then display a document (or web page). And that has been amazing. But the Web can only respond passively to the exact keywords you use; it cannot grasp what you really want and then actively go in search of things you may not even have thought to ask for. With the semantic web, search engines will be able to find more content and read through it, selecting web pages, people, places, companies, events, and more, all of which are relevant to your query, but which were not included in your keywords.

What makes a semantic search possible is additional coding (behind the scene) of the content posted on website. Right now, most of it is in HTML, but additional computer-readable tags can identify the “meaning” of specific content.

This is exactly how XBRL works, and why this new format for business reporting is considered the ideal match for the rapidly evolving semantic web. XBRL “tags” are added to numbers or text in a financial report. The tags explain and identify the original context (the semantic meaning) behind the number functioning as a bar code. For example, the tag can identify a number as IBM > net income > 2010 > in US dollars. XBRL-enabled software can search the Web and “read” vast numbers of financial reports, finding business information that is highly relevant to your query – and which would never have found in a standard keyword search.

Already Inline XBRL (iXBRL) provides a standard for embedding XBRL fragments into an HTML document, using a Firefox browser extension. While the HTML code of a Web page determines how the page will look, you can add XBRL instructions to the content, so the page can be read by other XBRL-enabled software – all behind the scenes.

If you are not technically inclined, don’t worry. You didn’t have to become a computer programmer to use the Web; you won’t have to become one to use the far greater powers of the semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information on the web is defined, and can be read by computers.