Do you geotag?
I never thought much about it until I read Jenn Kyrnin's article at About.com
I haven't written any geotags yet, but some sites I work on use zipcode searches with latitude and longitude already, maybe there is a way to get geotags working with the searches?
Also a very local site, for a small restaurant, shop etc. might benefit from the location metadata - but who is using the metadata?
Megan posted this at 16:03 — 6th July 2008.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
The microformat method is the way to go forward, I think. There are several other microformats you could be using particularly vcard for contacts and vevent for events. There's also one for reviews and I forget what else. Check microformats.org.
I do use hcard and hevent in some of my sites at work (wasn't really my doing though so I can't take credit).
I think this article sort of misses the point on microformats. This is a standard format that can be shared between applications. For example, browsers are starting to interpret microformats and can indicate to a user if there is a microformat stored in the page. If it was a hcard, for example, they could then add that to their contact list. A hcalendar event could be added to their calendar. Other applications can gather these items together and do stuff with them.
Another thing that's misisng here is that the geo microformat is in draft stage right now - it's not finalized and could change.
I'm also really not sure about if and how search engines are using the geo microformat. Especially considering that it was a draft. This was never mentioned in Googles recent discussions about geotargetting. I wouldn't be surprised if they do so in the future though. Some fringe/specialty engines could be. I would be surprised if Google put a particular amount of importance on these relatively obscure coding features. They tend to avoid things like that.
Apparently they are used more with mapping which is mostly missed in the article.
Megan
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