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What's XML actually?

Shole

Coder
So, I am not sure what it is, but all I know is that you have some xlm site maps on your site that are good for SEO?
Is it like linked to code of a page or am I wrong?
 
So, I am not sure what it is, but all I know is that you have some xlm site maps on your site that are good for SEO?
Is it like linked to code of a page or am I wrong?
Yes, XML is good for SEO & also good for letting other sites know what your data IS
HTML lets web browsers know how data/content should look, but XML actually labels things and is much more simple

XML can be used to let other apps or sites show the data. For example, there is an XML standard for news so that news can be crawled/displayed properly without worrying about any HTML getting in the way on the main page... here's an example of that:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<nitf>
  <head>
    <title>Colombia Earthquake</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <headline>
      <hl1>143 Dead in Colombia Earthquake</hl1>
    </headline>
    <byline>
      <bytag>By Jared Kotler, Associated Press Writer</bytag>
    </byline>
    <dateline>
      <location>Bogota, Colombia</location>
      <date>Monday January 25 1999 7:28 ET</date>
    </dateline>
  </body>
</nitf>

By using a standard like XML News, little news applets and websites can show your articles/news on their site easier.
So it's not just for SEO, it's great for internal and external uses of your info/data across different platforms & systems. XML is a data structure type of format that can be read by many different machines.
 
XML is a meta-language: a language that allows us to create or define other languages. For example, with XML we can create other languages, such as RSS, MathML (a mathematical markup language), and even tools like XSLT.
 
Lets define in simples words;
  • XML is free-talk language which can be understand by any machine on earth (open data interchange).
  • You can call JSON a successor of XML (personal point of view).
  • In terms of SEO you should be calling it Structured Data or Schema Markup
And Yes, structured data is very useful with SEO, even you can further optimize it via Google Webmaster.

Useful Resources and readings:
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool
https://moz.com/blog/structured-data-for-seo-1
https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data

Thank you.
 
In addition to what the others said:

First and foremost, XML is a markup language.
It's a set of rules that allows storing information in a way that is both machine-readable and human-readable.
At it's core XML is very generic and you can use it for almost anything.

For example if I wanted to create a program for managing recipes, I could decide to use XML to represent that data on disk:
XML:
<recipes>
    <recipe name="Awesome Bread">
        <step id="1">Get some flour</step>
        <step id="2">Get some water</step>
        <step id="3">Put both in a bowl</step>
        <!-- ... -->
    </recipe>
</recipes>

Now of course I want to be sure that I didn't make any errors while writing that.
So I'm creating a set of rules that defines that my recipes are stored as <recipe> in a <recipes> block.
It also defines that every <recipe> needs a name, and that every step needs an id.
In XML that's called a "schema".

With XML and schemas, you can define textual formats for any kind of data you want.

As others mentioned, this has been used to create things like XHTML, RSS, SVG, and many other things.
However it's important to keep in mind that these things are not part of XML.
They have been built using XML.
 
Hello, @Shole

I have added the prefix 'Need Help' so you can mark a reply as an answer if you think they helped you understand the concept.
If you found a better explanation please feel free to share it with us :)
 

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