Geospatial Metadata Validation Service

This service checks your FGDC-compatible geospatial metadata record using mp (metadata parser). Provide a metadata record that is formatted as indented text, XML, or SGML. Results will show discrepancies between the structure of your metadata record and the expectation of the FGDC metadata standard (FGDC-STD-001-1998) and will show several potentially useful re-expressions of the metadata record itself.

Notes:

If your input file is XML, its name must be something.xml
Input file must be smaller than 512k bytes
Writing metadata? Get tools and help at <http://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/>
If your input file is XML, the language choice will affect the element names in HTML and text output. It doesn't translate the text of your metadata.
I want to hear about any problems you encounter so that I can fix them. Please let me know how it goes!
This service will recognize elements from
- 1998 FGDC standard
- Biological data profile
- Shoreline profile
- Remote sensing profile
but the structural rules of those profiles will not be enforced unless you choose the profile from the appropriate drop-down menu
XML metadata generated by ESRI's ArcCatalog can now be processed here, but you should expect to see warning messages about the non-standard extensions used by ArcCatalog. In most cases these extensions can be accepted and will not adversely affect other software.
If you get lots of unrecognized element errors, you might have metadata that were written for some other metadata standard.
If your input file is indented text and you get lots of errors, you could try the cns variant of this service
No errors? That's good. But this metadata record also gets no errors.
This service is remarkably popular. A summary of usage is available.
Need more options? I may be able to help.