But even in your example the content of the pages is what's important, and that is data, not metadata. Metadata might be stuff like "the search for '$FOO' was done from IP address '$BAR' at time '$BAZ'". And you could even argue that $FOO itself is really data, not meta-data.
Likewise the contents of your receipt is data, not metadata. It's literally the bill of goods that authorizes you to take the named items from the store and (with your additional purchase creds) authorized Kroger to charge your credit card $X.XX. Kroger may have inferred more than you wished, but they did it with the data.
'Information' is also a meta-data of that "meta-data" above, which one is more useful? Can anyone tell what you did when given meta-data of "information"?
Can you derive back to what you did, given 'information' as meta-data?
If it's turtles all the way up then it's turtles all the way down.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that metadata is not warrant-protected, so I'd be highly leery of equating data with metadata. (edit: spelling fix)
Likewise the contents of your receipt is data, not metadata. It's literally the bill of goods that authorizes you to take the named items from the store and (with your additional purchase creds) authorized Kroger to charge your credit card $X.XX. Kroger may have inferred more than you wished, but they did it with the data.