Frequently Asked Questions

= Frequently Asked Questions =

This is the long version of the FAQ. It may be difficult to navigate, because it has a lot of information. Try the abbreviated FAQ page first, which answers the most common questions.

If you have additional questions, please post them


 * on the GoodRelations mailing list
 * on answers.semanticweb.com (make sure to add the tag "goodrelations"),
 * on Quora (make sure to add the topic "GoodRelations"),
 * on StackOverflow (make sure to add the tag "goodrelations"), or
 * via IRC.

Will the extra markup slow down my page?
No. In comparison to the total size of all components of typical e-commerce Web pages, GoodRelations meta-data will add just 0.5 - 1 % of extra markup. Since HTTP 1.1 supports compression by default and since a part of the page loading times are independent of the size of the content for establishing the connection, even very comprehensive GoodRelations markup typically adds less than 0.2 - 0.5 % (!) to the loading time. This means that for a page loading in 300 ms, the transfer of the rich e-commerce meta-data will at max require additional 2 ms.

This is way beyond what humans are able to spot.

Which industries or types of products are most suited for GoodRelations?
specific, geo, dynamics, rational, multiple dimensions

How can I prevent my competitors from abusing my rich markup?

 * 1) Legally
 * 2) Technically

Will GoodRelations further increase price comparison shopping?
No, quite the contrary.

Is GoodRelations really free?
Yes. The usage of the vocabulary and the documentation is provided free of charge. The vocabulary is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to remix/adapt the work (e.g. to import the ontology and create specializations of its elements), as long as you attribute the work.

All content from this wiki and the user's guide are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

If you want to use the GoodRelations logo in your application, please contact mheppATcomputerDOTorg.

General support via the public mailing list and other public channels is free of charge, too.

Third parties may offer GoodRelations-related consulting for money, of course.

For more details, see http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Licensing

Where can I find a free SPARQL endpoint with all GoodRelations data from the Web?
There is currently no "Google-like" RDF repository that offers you free access to the whole Web via a convenient SPARQL endpoint.

Some public SPARQL endpoints offer a moderate amount of such data, see


 * http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Public_endpoints

If this does not meet the needs for your application, you will have to crawl and cleanse the data yourself, e.g. from


 * http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Datasets

Crawling, cleansing, and consolidating structured data at Web scale is a non-trivial task, so do not expect someone else to do it for you for free. It may be a good business idea to offer such a service.