geo location tags

[robinev]

Another thread somehow got off onto geography which brought this to mind.

Right now, there are at least a couple of proposals out there for identifying the geographic location of a web page. The major issues involve locating a user by IP address or extended informaiton, but a subset has fallen to web pages themselves.

One of the proposals uses meta-tags like these to "locate" a page:
[code]<meta name="geo.position" content="47.614093;-122.317735" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="US-WA" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Seattle, Washington" />[/code]

The notion is that a service that cared about it could use tags like these to build a list of neighborhood resources. Mostly, though, nobody cares (yet). There is, however, one service that will generate a list of blogs in a neighborhood partly by using these tags.

I'm not sure that anything significant would ever come of these notions other than generating yet more useless meta-tags, but I still find it an intriguing idea.

[webado]

If Google were to jump in on it it might take off.

Right now I have heard that when Google offers to search for pages from a certain country, it looks in an index built by resolving the ip address of the server where each web site is hosted to get its geo-location, which gives the country, which is a bunch of bubblegum.

My web sites will forever be associated with the US since the server I'm using is located in the US. Were I to change to another hosting company with servers, say, in Australia, then lo and behold my web sites will become Australian.

[westmoors]

Which might explain why my site is listed in the French version cos my ISP geolocation is Frogland but I'm resident in good ole Blighty!

[robinev]

Originally Posted by chrisooc

If Google were to jump in on it it might take off. ...My web sites will forever be associated with the US since the server I'm using is located in the US.

Google is, indeed, the key to this. I put the tags on my pages mostly hoping that they might decide to do something with them someday.

There are clearly many sites that would get no benefit from this kind of thing. What would IBM put on their sites? Armonk? Probably not.

But there are others for whom it would be useful. The issues you mention about server location are a good example. Some folks don't care or even want to hide their real location. For other sites, however, location can be an important element and this strikes me as a good way to identify it.

Part of the problem comes from the way the internet developed. TLD's that identified countries were a fairly late addition after it had been extended beyond its original .mil, .edu, and .gov domains. Once the web exploded onto the scene using an almost-generic ".com" TLD, there wasn't much chance of locating things that way alone.

[webado]

Yes, .com is a good example. AWSTATS use teh TLD and I believe identifies referrers from a .com site as from the US in the absence of a more sophisticated geo-location tool being installed on the given server. Unless it too uses the IP of the server and converts to whatever country that happens to correspond to - I will have to try to verify some of this.

[jonra01]

It looks like it would be as easy to abuse these meta tags as it is to abuse the keyword and description tags. Lots of sites already use deceptive techniques to attract people that search for local information. I wonder how long it will take before the same happens to geo-locators?

John

[webado]

Originally Posted by jonra01

It looks like it would be as easy to abuse these meta tags as it is to abuse the keyword and description tags. Lots of sites already use deceptive techniques to attract people that search for local information. I wonder how long it will take before the same happens to geo-locators?

John

Not long at all, if it's not already happened.

However the idea is that the country where the server is located is irrelevant, now with the global economy. As are tld's which may have been ok, had they but been available consistently and at reasonable prices for all tld's. I never bothered to regsiter a .ca since up until very recently that was cosnting 3-4 times more than a .com , while at the same time a .us domain is barely half the price of a .com . If Canada wants to encourage websites to sport the .ca tld, at the very least Canada should ensure that the tld is available at competitive prices.

Now I could get the .ca at a price similar to the .com, however I probably won't since Google still won't readily associate my site with anything Canadian just based on the .ca tld, so what's the point? I have quite liberally reserved the .com, .net and .org of the domain because it was easy and inexpensive, but the .ca would be a different registrar and I don't feel like having to manage yet another account somewhere else.

[robinev]

Originally Posted by jonra01

Lots of sites already use deceptive techniques to attract people that search for local information. I wonder how long it will take before the same happens to geo-locators?

The folks who believe that "marketing" is a synonym for "lying" will misuse any tool available. These would be no exception. And it might just be too much work for the search engines to verify yet another set of tags, although it would certainly be possible to do so.

If a site claims with its geo-tags to be in Two Dot, MT but doesn't use the words "two dot" anywhere within the text, then it would be safe to ignore the tags. But a site that meets that kind of minimal criteria (or something similar) could then be located more precisely than most current methods allow.

Since Google and many other map sites use the same kind of encoding for their maps, they could add an interesting extra bit of information for their users by mapping out web sites that claim (for whatever reason) to be in a certain location.

(BTW, MSN's Terraserver gives you the latitude and longitude for any address you enter with the information that it needs for its displays. It is displayed in the left-side column.)

[trackerm]

I am in Australia, My girlfriends website is a .com instead of a .com.au as .com is considered much more trendy.
Her host is a budget one in australia (normal hosting caost $30 per month at leats, hers is $30 per year) which has its servers in the USA.

Many people in Australia when using Google click on results "Pages from Australia".

I have chucked in some meta tags 9not those geo locators) to no avail.

It is a big problem as one doesnt know this problem till that have paid, made their site and been crawled.

Plus I still dont think it will be more effective if she has a .com.au although I have seen a couple of site that do work... and I ripped off their meta tags...

[webado]

Chances are the server is actually located in Texas, while the hosting company headquarters are in Australia - a very common setup, my own is like that. A real global village and Google can't find its way around it