As you attend conferences, read industry literature or peruse blogs, you may come to the conclusion that there are a lot of “webs” out there. And if a scientist was reading this, they would probably completely agree with that premise. But for most, we’ve come to know the web as one thing. So if there is one thing, why are there so many names for it?
Here are some of them: Hidden Web, Deep Web, Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Semantic Web, Implicit Web, Visible Web and Invisible Web. And I’m sure I am missing some commonly used. Let’s try to settle some of the mystery. Here is the way I define them at a high level:
Web 1.0 – The web as we came to know it in the late 90′s where the number of pages were ramping at a tremendous rate, web businesses were blossoming, Geocities was considered innovative and the lead up to and through the bubble. The companies such as Amazon and eBay made a name for themselves.
Web 2.0 – The next phase of the web where the power of people and data really started to unlock all of the content published during the 1.0 generation. I posted on this topic previously.
Visible Web – The visible web is quite related to the deep web…in fact you can most well refer to it as the exact opposite. The visible web is the web that is, in fact, accessible to web crawlers.
Deep Web – The deep web typically refers to web pages and content that is not as easily accessible via typical crawling or retrieval methods. Often, this content is not accessible because it is located in structured databases. Many refer to this type of content as not being part of the “surface web”. And other terms such as “hidden web” and “invisible web” are synonyms of this one (the terms were probably both created at two different conferences). Wikipedia has a good reference on this topic. According to BrightPlanet, the “Deep Web” is 400 to 550 times largerthan the traditional web. See their white paper on the topic. Cal Berkeley also has very good reference information on the topic.
Implicit Web – The implicit web is a term commonly used with much more of a user-focus. In today’s web, much of the value for a user is self-directed or derived through explicit activities. There is a fantastic post, “Implicit” Web: A Case for Self-Determination?. Many sites are now trying to add further value to users by “tailoring of services and content to users based upon historical analysis of user actions and interests”.
Semantic Web – The “semantic web” is commonly (and recently) been referred to as Web 3.0 where the web extends to more than pages being portrayed at the document level and where sites (and content pages) are structured in a manner where all of the entities within a page are machine readable. I wrote a post, “Semantic Web, the next wave of the web?” a few weeks ago on the semantic web that talks more about this. If you need an analogy, think of RSS extending to web page construction, a universal standard where a web site can be machine readable.
There are probably other webs that are missing from this, feel free to leave me comments. Perhaps we should combine all of these under one term called “tangled web”. Remember if it catches on, you heard it hear first…