Geographical information
META GEO tags
Meta data that is stored in the part of an HTML document isn't used by alot of search engines (at the moment) but it may
become very useful in the future when doing regional searches and analysis. There are currently 3 useful Meta geo tags worth
keeping an eye on :
<META NAME="geo.region" content="GB-GRE" />
<META NAME="geo.placename" content="London" />
<META NAME="geo.position" content="51.477159;0.104058" />
The "geo.region" is a combination of Country code and region code as defined by ISO3166-1 & ISO3166-2.
The "geo.placement" is a name as defined by the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
The "geo.position" is ismply the geographical Latitude and Longitude.
There is one other meta tag which is being used but if the acronym is anything to go by I'd give this one a wide birth!
<META NAME="ICBM" content="51.477159, 0.104058," />
ICBM - "InterContinental Ballistic Missile" - useful if you want to target(!) your search.
If you are not in the mood to research the above geo tag values then simply go to the web site GEO-TAG Generator
and it will do all the workings out for you and all you do is simply cut-n-paste the generated code!
Once you have added your geo meta data to your web page you can then validate it using GEO-TAG Validator
Now that you've mastered META geo. tags, now have a read about Geo RSS feeder files.
PLEASE NOTE: The Longitude/Latitude references are different between Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth. And the Greenwich Meridian
Line is no longer Longitude zero. So whatever application you use make sure there is compensation for this anomaly. So if you are using
the ICBM literally, you may drop a bomb in the wrong country!!
And here are the icons I have created to alert of the Geo meta tags :
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