Top 100 most popular RDF namespace prefixes

I run prefix.cc, a website for RDF developers where anyone can register and look up the expansion URIs for namespace prefixes such as foaf, dc, qb or void. The site tracks which prefixes gets looked up most often. This allows some insight into the popularity of RDF vocabularies and datasets.

This post is a snapshot of the top 100 most requested prefixes as of today.

Caveats:

  1. The counts reflect what knowledgeable RDF hackers are interested in. This may or may not reflect the interests of more casual users, or what’s deployed on the web. The og prefix for Facebook’s Open Graph protocol for example is outside of the list, at #273.
  2. “Users” of the site include automated apps and web crawlers. This distorts numbers. For example, the prefix.cc homepage links to prefix.cc/foaf, driving crawlers and first-time visitors that way, inflating foaf numbers.
  3. Here I deliberately do not include the full URI expansions for those prefixes. Prefix.cc allows multiple competing expansions for a prefix. Users can then vote to determine what’s shown first. It can be subject to gaming, ballot stuffing, and so on. There are strong disagreements over the “best” expansion for some prefixes, starting right at #2 with dc, which is one of most controversial prefixes on the site. (If you need expansions, then you can get a fresh set from the API.)
  4. Prefix.cc doesn’t allow registration of single-letter namespaces, along with some other syntactic restrictions. Some vocabularies suggest single-letter prefixes, most notably Google’s rdf.data-vocabulary.org, which is commonly abbreviated “v”. (Someone has registered dv for it, but that rarely gets looked up.)

That being said: The data is below, and a CSV version is available too.

Rank Prefix Lookups
1 foaf 45506
2 dc 17621
3 rdf 17585
4 rdfs 14865
5 owl 11898
6 geonames 9349
7 geo 4757
8 skos 4501
9 dbp 3396
10 swrc 2439
11 sioc 2336
12 xsd 2310
13 dbo 2089
14 dc11 2006
15 doap 1856
16 dbpprop 1697
17 content 1621
18 wot 1598
19 rss 1474
20 gen 1403
21 dbpedia 1377
22 d2rq 1370
23 nie 1352
24 xhtml 1336
25 test2 1305
26 gr 1301
27 dcterms 1255
28 org 1157
29 vcard 1154
30 akt 1150
31 dct 1118
32 ex 1104
33 fb 995
34 owlim 993
35 cfp 978
36 xf 960
37 sism 956
38 earl 948
39 bio 941
40 reco 936
41 xfn 926
42 media 925
43 air 921
44 dcmit 920
45 void 917
46 fn 915
47 afn 910
48 cc 906
49 cld 900
50 vann 898
51 days 895
52 ical 893
53 http 893
54 mu 888
55 sd 874
56 osag 874
57 botany 859
58 cal 858
59 musim 850
60 factbook 848
61 cs 845
62 log 838
63 rev 837
64 swande 836
65 bibo 834
66 dcq 834
67 cv 832
68 ome 830
69 biblio 830
70 dir 828
71 giving 827
72 memo 827
73 ok 826
74 rel 821
75 event 818
76 ir 818
77 aiiso 816
78 ad 813
79 dbr 813
80 co 812
81 af 809
82 cmp 806
83 bill 805
84 rif 804
85 xs 804
86 math 803
87 rdfg 803
88 daia 801
89 swc 800
90 tag 800
91 swanq 799
92 xhv 796
93 book 795
94 jdbc 793
95 myspace 792
96 tzont 792
97 sr 790
98 ctag 789
99 dcn 787
100 lomvoc 786
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2 Responses to Top 100 most popular RDF namespace prefixes

  1. zazi says:

    Some including namespace a very doubtable regarding their popularity. You may should mark “counts reflect what knowledgeable RDF hackers are interested in” in bold style. However, I think even then it is still very doubtable. Anyway, thanks a lot for your efforts. You already named the sources for this biased view (automated apps and web crawlers – are not “RDF hackers” ;) ).

  2. @zazi: Data with known biases is better than no data.

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