“What Is Metadata: Definition, Types, and Uses” with examples of metadata fields, such as name, description, creator, date, and location.

What Is Metadata? Definition, Types, and Uses

Metadata is data about data. It makes data searchable, adds context, and improves organization. Learn about the types and uses.

Common uses cases of metadata including data discover and search, data lineage tracking, data governance and compliance, personalized experiences, data quality assessment, and website optimization.

Metadata FAQs

Metadata provides essential context and structure to data, making it easier to find, manage, and understand. It improves searchability, categorization, and interoperability, so that humans and AI can search, retrieve, and use data quickly and effectively.

Metadata helps to organize and maintain high-quality data, which AI agents need in order to generate more reliable outputs: insights, personalized recommendations, customer behavior predictions, sales trends, and market opportunities. AI metadata defines the structure, behavior, and relationships within data, clarifying what each data point means, where it originated, and how it’s derived.

Metadata in photos can be accessed through image properties in the file details. You can save the photo to your device and use your device’s inspection tool or something like Adobe Lightroom to find the metadata. This metadata typically includes information such as the camera settings, location data, and the date the photo was taken.

The three main types of metadata are descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata. Descriptive metadata helps in discovery and identification, structural metadata organizes data relationships, and administrative metadata manages rights and preservation.

There are significant differences between data vs. metadata. Data refers to the actual content, such as a document, image, or video, whereas metadata describes the characteristics and properties of that content. Metadata provides details like author, creation date, format, and access permissions, making it easier to organize and retrieve data efficiently.