The current web was designed to improve the exchange of information between different people. Unfortunately machines cannot easily access this information since there is too much overhead involved: the content is not cleanly separated from the instructions on how to present content. An HTML document mixes content and layout instructions. Another problem is that a word can have different meanings. Any search engine on the web at present suffers badly from this defect, and a lot of effort is spent trying to remedy it. Using languages that allow automatic interpretation of content can solve this problem at a fundamental level.

It is the goal of the Semantic Web to make information on the web machine-processable. A lot of things which currently need human aid can be automated in this way, e.g. making a synthesis of information that is found in different documents, filtering the results of a search engine, etc.