GeoTags

Adding GEO TAGS in Meta

[Benjamin Burns]

Hello all,

Anyone else playing around with implementing GEO TAGS in their meta? I've been recently seeing a little more accurate listings in some cases.. I know it's not going to move the needle that much, yet may stil be useful.

Cheers,

Ben

[Quadrille]

more accurate listings

Really? with which search engines?

I wasn't aware that any of the majors needed such a tag - page content gives the same message, without the need.

Or am I missing something?

[Benjamin Burns]

I've seen a little movement in MSN. The following is an example of the geo tag:

<meta name="geo.region" content="US-MD" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Columbia" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="39.168122;-76.844225" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="39.168998, -76.844989" />

[bill]

Really? with which search engines?

There are a few specialty SEs that read the geotags. However, they aren't too big.

Yahoo has geotagging for Flickr. The mapping features for most of the majors support some of these tags to an extent. The question really is which ones do we need?

[Quadrille]

Thanks for that; you've identified the question .... who has the answer?

:)

[bill]

I approach it kind of like I did all the standard meta tags back in the days of AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, et. al. Just include them all on a few potentially relevant pages.

If you have a local site that could benefit from customers finding your physical location, then there's no reason not to try most of the tags mentioned above.

[Robert Charlton]

If you have a local site that could benefit from customers finding your physical location, then there's no reason not to try most of the tags mentioned above.

The danger in using such a meta tag, I believe, is in relying on it. If you believe that the tag is all you need to optimize a page for an organic geo search, then you most likely haven't done your job.

I think in most situations you need to really think about possible vocabulary for a geo-search, and figure out how to optimize a page or a site for various combinations. It's often not easy.

Yahoo has geotagging for Flickr.

This does pull me into the discussion. ;)

[Silvery]

I think it'd be much more beneficial to include hCard Microformatting.

[bill]

hCard Microformatting is for marking up addresses. GeoTags that include latitude and longitude could be much more precise. For instance GeoTags could be plugged into a GPS unit as-is.

hCard Microformats are said to be recognized by some search engines so it's a good idea to incorporate them too. If anything I'd be inclined to use both, not one or the other.

[inbound]

The need for a widely used standard here is huge, and I feel not far away. Browser side solutions for Geolocation are making it to beta so there needs to be site specific tags that help match up people to local data.