Rampaging Roy Slaven used to say the Web would be better once they got all the words off it.
Words in themselves make appear conspicuously informative, but as anyone regularly conducting basic web searches will know, they can easily confuse the issue. Those of us who started off in the early days of the Web with blunt search tools such as Webcrawler, then moved up to the slightly more sophisticated Metacrawler and AltaVista, were easily impressed by Google. As a regular user, I have begun to feel even Google's limitations though. Of course, sensible use of meta tags on pages has always helped.
The Semantic Web concept of languages designed for data is a good one, somewhat akin to the use of Subject Headings by cataloguers (if more advanced in its constructions). Of course, it runs the risk of turning into a bad idea if these become overly restrictive or absurdly over semantic (as many Subject Headings already are). People will, undoubtedly, also find ways to misuse whatever system, particularly if it means receiving more hits on their sites.
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