# Microformat | | **Microformat**s (μF) are a set of defined HTML classes created to serve as consistent and descriptive metadata about an element, designating it as representing a certain type of data. They allow software to process the information reliably by having set classes refer to a specific type of data rather than being arbitrary. Microformats emerged around 2005 and were predominantly designed for use by search engines, web syndication and aggregators such as RSS. | |-|-| | | wikipedia:: [Microformat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformat) |