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Best Buy Local Store Sites Go Semantic With Good Relations Ontology

June 5th, 2009

Posted in: Business, Linked Data, RDF, Semantic Web, Theory, Web Standards, Working

The experimentation continues on our Best Buy Local Stores platform. For the past year or so, I’ve been interested in going beyond the standard web experience and into the world of semantic web. I am out to create and find examples of how we annotate good store data beyond the confines of the typical web site, and what commerce sites will look like in a new semantic web. After some research, the GoodRelations Ontology seemed like an appropriate solution to provide better data around our stores and offerings.

The current solution involves publishing offering, payment methods, delivery methods, store details and store hour data in RDF/XML using GoodRelations for all 1000+ Best Buy stores in the US. Examples may be found on all Best Buy Local store pages. A couple of highlights:

A special thanks to Martin Hepp for his great work and assistance in this venture.

6 Comments

  • On June 8th, 2009 at 9:36 pm Sherman Monroe wrote:

    Jay, this is great news! I wish you well on your efforts. I would also like to encourage you to be sure you’re abiding by the Linked Data Principles, so that your resources can be understood up by semweb agents discovered by other users.

  • On June 8th, 2009 at 9:40 pm Daniel O'Connor wrote:

    Neat!

    Now if only bestbuy were in Australia.

  • On June 12th, 2009 at 6:26 am Nicolas Raoul wrote:

    Great news!
    This will make it a treat to create mashups that use your data, such as price comparizon websites.
    Do you plan to generate RDFa within the web pages, or to create a separate file or triplestore serving semantic information? Sematic web-enabled browsers users will become interested in the first one, and mashup developers will be interested in the second, so you might want to generate both.
    I am also planning to publish GoodRelations data.
    Please let us know when it rolls out :-)
    Cheers,
    Nicolas Raoul

  • On July 15th, 2009 at 12:17 pm Loren H wrote:

    Jay, where can we find an equivalent standard for describing a computer and it’s configuration (OS, amount of memory, installed software, etc.) Have you seen in standard ways to share data about machines using any open .NET apps?

  • On October 18th, 2010 at 5:03 pm Information Development » Blog Archive » A Semantic Web Case Study wrote:

    [...] Buy was smart in going semantic. It did initially go all in. Rather, as Jay Myers points out, Best Buy initially rolled out GoodRelations across a number of stores. Buoyed by early successes, only then did the company embrace GoodRelations company-wide. Today, [...]

  • On February 23rd, 2011 at 11:35 am dbcn wrote:

    Can you comment on what Best Buy has gained by adding this information?

    How does the GoodRelations data surfaced on search engines?

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