• Home
• About this Site
• Contact Us
• RSS Feeds
• eGovRC Toolbar

Help & Print

Help Print

Resize Text

Categories, RSS and More

Discoverability Standard

Whole of Victorian Government ICT Standard: Discoverability

Website Management Framework

Identifier: WEB/STD/01
Version No.: 3.0
Status: Approved
Original Issue Date: 27 October 2004
Date of effect: 31 March 2011
Next review date: 31 March 2013

Owner: Information Victoria, Department of Business and Innovation

Issuing authority: Government Services Group, Department of Treasury and Finance, Victorian Government

Standard: Discoverability - WEB/STD/01

Standard

Agencies will ensure information on their websites is discoverable by complying with the Discovery Requirements below.

Requirement

1. Conduct keyword research to determine the most relevant keywords for users and incorporate the findings into website content and metadata.

2. Implement unique, descriptive and meaningful page titles for all web pages using the HTML title element.

3. Implement descriptive and meaningful values for the keywords and description attributes of the HTML meta element on all web pages.

4. Implement descriptive and meaningful values for the mandatory and recommended properties of the AGLS Metadata Standard (AS 5044‐2010) on all web pages.(1)

5. Ensure all non-HTML documents (2) have complete, accurate and descriptive document properties.

6. Register with Victoria Online;

7. Register with the Open Directory Project (Victorian Government category)

8. Register with Business Licensing Information Service (where licensing is involved) and/or Health translations directory (where non‐English health information is involved).

9. Register with external search engines.

10. Implement and register a discoverable XML sitemap that conforms to the sitemaps.org protocol and/or provide an A-Z html index.

11. Implement the robots.txt protocol for controlling search engine content‐indexing. (3)

12. Implement one primary domain name and permanent redirects (301 Moved permanently) from alternate domain names. (4)

13. Implement a website search facility for users.

Overview

Discoverability is the degree to which something can be easily found and/or navigated. Ensuring websites are discoverable can have considerable benefits, including:

• a better web experience for users through efficient, targeted access to information and services;
• increased traffic to the website from external search engines, portals and other websites; and
• a means to consistently describe information and services, e.g. metadata.

Rationale

• To improve the citizens's ability to find government information and services
• To assist site discoverability trhough external search engines and portals

Derivation

None

Related principles / objectives

Citizens can enjoy a consistent and high quality user experience and are able to complete desired tasks.

In Scope

• All departments and the four inner budget agencies (Vic Roads, Victoria Police, Environment Protection Authority and State Revenue Office) and CenITex
• All internet sites including channels, portals and subdomains

Audience

Website Management Taskforces, website managers, content authors and owners, developers and / or anyone responsible for the management of a website.

Compliance Date

Compliance is required from the date of effect of this standard for all requirements except Requirement 4. All websites must comply with Requirement 4 within 12 months from the date of effect of this standard.

Please note that this is a refreshed standard. The previous version of this standard (version 2.1) applies until the compliance date of this new standard is reached. Agencies may move to compliance earlier than the compliance date.

Reporting requirements

Annual reporting using the Government Services Division WMF template.

Guidelines, toolkits and references

Process: Victoria Online registration., Victoria Online
External standard: The AGLS Metadata Standard (AS 5044‐2010) is provided in two parts: AGLS Metadata Standard: Part 1, Reference Description (PDF 981 kB) and AGLS Metadata Standard: Part 2, Usage Guide (PDF 638 kB). (These documents require the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader).
External references: Documents, www.agls.gov.au
External tool: Google Webmaster Tools
External tool: Bing Webmaster Tools
External tool: Yahoo! Search Submission
External guideline: Submit a Site to the Open Directory, www.dmoz.org
External guideline: The Beginners Guide to SEO, www.seomoz.org
External guideline: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Google, 2010 (PDF 4.1 MB) (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Further Information

For further information please contact web.standards@dtf.vic.gov.au

Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

AGLS - Australian Government Locator Service

Domain Name - A name that identifies one or more IP addresses. Domain names within vic.gov.au are registered via the domainname.gov.au registry system.

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language - a markup language used in the creation of web pages.

IP Address - An internet protocol (IP) address is a dot notation, numerical identifier for ad evice in a computer network eg., 210.247.208.241

Keyword(s) - A word(s) that a user enters into a search engine to find relevant web content.

Metadata - Data which describes the content or information displayed on a website page.

Page title - Page titles are used to describe the content of web pages. Page titles are created by inserting the desired text between the HTML title tags in the HTML source.

Redirect - A redirect is a technique used to involuntarily navigate a user from one URL to another URL. Redirects can be implemented client‐side or server‐side. The most commonly used server side redirects are permanent redirects (301 Moved permanently(5)) or temporary redirects (302 Found (6)).

Subdomain - A subdomain is a domain that resides under, or as part of, a larger domain. For example, in the address test.egov.vic.gov.au, test is a sub-domain of egov.vic.gov.au and egov is a sub-domain of vic.gov.au. Domains may have any number of subdomains and each may have a different IP address to its parent domain.

URL - Universal Resource Locater – the individual address of each web page.

WMF - Website Management Framework

WoVG - Whole of Victorian Government

XML - eXtensible Markup Language – a flexible language / specification used to share structured data between systems

---

Footnotes:

1. See sections 4.1.2 and 4.1.3 of: AGLS Metadata Standard: part2, Usage Guide (PDF 638kb). (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader).

2. For example, Word, Excel and PDF documents

3. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard

4. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301

5. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_301

6. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302

---

Alternative formats:

This standard is available from the Government Services Division in pdf format (169kb). (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Last updated: 6 March 2012

Search, Login and Options