Resources of a Resource is an XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 format for describing the content of an internet resource or website in a generic fashion so this content can be better understood by search engine

Search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

s, spider

Web crawler

A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...

s, web application

Web application

A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...

s, etc. The ROR format provides several pre-defined terms for describing objects like sitemaps, products, events, reviews, jobs, classifieds, etc. The format can be extended with custom terms.

RORweb.com is the official website of ROR; the ROR format was created by AddMe.com as a way to help search engines better understand content and meaning. Similar concepts, like Google Sitemaps

Google Sitemaps

The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes,...

 and Google Base

Google Base

Google Base was an online database provided by Google into which any user can add almost any type of content, such as text, images, and structured information in formats such as XML, PDF, Excel, RTF, or WordPerfect. As of September 2010, the product has since been promoted to Google Merchant Center...

, have also been developed since the introduction of the ROR format.

ROR objects are placed in an ROR feed called ror.xml. This file is typically located in the root directory

Root directory

In computer file systems, the root directory is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy. It can be likened to the root of a tree — the starting point where all branches originate.-Metaphor:...

 of the resource or website it describes. When a search engine like Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 or Yahoo searches the web to determine how to categorize content, the ROR feed allows the search engines "spider" to quickly identify all the content and attributes of the website.

This has three main benefits:

1. It allows the spider to correctly categorize the content of the website into its engine.
2. It allows the spider to extract very detailed information about the objects on a website (sitemaps, products, events, reviews, jobs, classifieds, etc.)
3. It allows the website owner to optimize his site for inclusion of its content into the search engines.