Microformats
Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards like HTML and CSS. They allow developers to embed structured data directly into web content, making it machine-readable while maintaining human readability. This enables search engines, aggregators, and other tools to easily extract and process information such as contact details, events, or reviews from web pages.
Developers should learn and use Microformats when they need to add semantic meaning to web content for improved SEO, accessibility, and data interoperability without complex schemas. Specific use cases include marking up contact information for business listings, events for calendar integration, or reviews for product pages, as they are lightweight and easy to implement compared to alternatives like JSON-LD. They are particularly useful in scenarios where simplicity and backward compatibility with existing HTML are priorities.