Techy: GeoURL and GeoTagging

It seems that geographically tagging your website has really taken off. Around a month ago, I added a “meta tag” to this blog detailing where I am physically located – I mainly did this to try and enhance the details of my blog shown on Syndic8 (which, unfortunately, hasn’t picked up the tags yet). Syndic8 pointed me towards the Geotags site which helped inform me what format the values correctly.

Since then, GeoURL has really taken off and currently lists around 3,200 sites which have been correctly “ICBM tagged” – I guess the coverage by an extremely large number of people making blog entries about the geographical site database service – most of whom seem to have heard of the service via this Slashdot article.

So, why am I posting about it now?

First of all, a little explanation of GeoTagging in general is necessary I think. Therefore, here is a nice description and instructions about GeoTagging:

First of all, a little explanation of GeoTagging in general is necessary I think. Therefore, here is a nice description and instructions about GeoTagging:

What is GeoTagging

‘Location-Tagging’ is the the name given to ‘tagging’ an object with its geographical location co-ordinates. For example, using the DNS-Loc system, you can ‘tag’ your server (using the DNS record entries) to say it that it is physically located in London, Madrid, New York etcetera. This helps people using tools such as VisualRoute to see roughly where your site is located – if you your buying something on line, wouldn’t you be slightly reassured to know that the server is located in London instead of somewhere like Nigeria? Of course, the data (a DNS “LOC” record) entered by the system administrator can be inaccurate, but if you use a tool such as VisualRoute you’ll be able to spot anomalies and mistakes.

GeoTagging, however, works on the basis that a page is tagged with the co-ordinates of the content producers – for example, if you had a server located in New York, but your company was based in London – then you would tag your site with your London location. Likewise this blog, although it located on a server in London, is tagged to within 100metres of my Leicestershire address (I couldn’t get the accuracy any closer). There are a few more benefits of this form of location tagging than DNS-Loc tagging – for instance, if you a restaurant were to ‘tag’ its location on its webpage and a search engine could ‘read’ the code you could then instantly search for restaurants within 10 miles of your location. The closest system to do this so far (to my knowledge) is Chefmoz, but that still relies on manual geographical placement by volunteer editors.

How do I GeoTag my site?

The easiest way would be to follow the instructions on the GeoTags site. But the method I used was the following:

1. Go to Multimap and enter my post code (US users can use the USA page to enter their zip code, and European located people can go to the Euro-search page)
2. Look at the text underneath the image displayed which will read something like: X:458400m Y:307700m 52:39:51N, 1:08:17W (Postcode) Grid Ref:SK583077(accurate to 100 metres) (which is in Leicester, UK)
3. Go to the GeoTags site and enter in the Latitude (the North or South value) and Longitude (East or West) values.
   I entered: Latitude: 52° 39' 51" N
Longitude: 1° 08' 17" W

.

4. I left the “TGN/ CPCGN/ Tiger Position:” box empty.
5. Enter in the appropriate 2 character country code (for the United Kingdom use “GB” instead of “UK”).
   I entered: Country Code: GB.
6. Enter in the appropriate “region code” (UK users can consult this list.
   I entered: Region Code: : GB-LEC)
7. In the place name field, you enter in the name of your village, city, town, or state. It’s “free form” so just enter in values you think appropriate.
   I just entered: Place Name: Leicester
8. Press the “Convert” button.
9. Copy the “Generated Geo Tags” shown in the top-right frame:
   <meta name="geo.position" content="52.6642;-1.1381">
<meta name="geo.region" content="GB-LEC">
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Leicester">
10. It is also advisable to add the following tags:
    <meta name="ICBM" content="52.6642;-1.1381">
    (The values are copied from the geo.position tag) and
    <meta name="DC.title" content="your site title name">

11. Add those tags in between the <head> and </head> parts

What do the tags do?

geo.position

Declares the geographical position of the “site” – this can be a location of the shop, store, restaurant that the site is about or the location of the author (in the case of a blog)

geo.region

The geographical region of the site. For example, “GB-LEC” would help an automated system correctly classify a site as being in Leicester (LEC) which is in GB (Great Britain)

geo.placename

Slightly less important tag (as it will be more difficult for automated systems to correctly sort as it is a ‘free-form’ field), but it just helps classify where in the geographical region the site is. For example, if I lived in the part of Leicester called “St.Matthews”, I would put “St.Matthews” in this field.

ICBM

ICBM is actually an acronym for “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile” and an “ICBM address” is also known as a “missile address”. This abbreviation has more to do with historical internet customs then anything else – on the USENET news service people often included their geographical location in the longitude and latitude format, but it was probably termed an ICBM address as those details could, in theory, be used to help target a missile directly to your house. Of course, if the military have taken to searching the internet for USENET posts or web site entries about you, I’m sure they already know where you live… A “proper” missile address would also include the “target elevation” (how high you are above sea level) to ensure that the missile would correctly explode and not end up burying itself 300ft underneath your carpet.

What do I do after I’ve GeoTagged my site?

The first thing to do is probably to submit your site to the GeoTags search engine and the GeoURL ping form. Your site will then be listed on those search engines (usually within a few hours) and will allow others to see how far your are away from them.

But what about the future?

Well, if I were to tell you that the 2002 Google Programming Contest was won by Dan Egnor with his Geographical Search idea and that Google thought it was an “interesting and useful idea” it might give you a clue. (Incidentally, it was Dan’s winning of the contest that started the idea of GeoURL).

Many search engines provide “regional” variations of their services (for example Google provides Google UK for United Kingdom editors, and Altavista provides UK Altavista), but at the moment they’ve got no way of correctly recognising if a site is based in each company. Many sites (including my main site) have .com domain names (many also have .net) which are non-geographical – unlike the country code domain names such as .uk . So how do they currently recognise if a .com site is based in the UK? Well, at the moment all they’ve got to go on is where the server the site resides on is located. However, there is nothing stopping my blog from being on a US-based server with a .com domain name…

But what if the search engines had an easy way of telling where the site was located? Yep, they could then ensure the web site is listed in the correct regional search engine database (‘deep-links’ to individual stores etcetera with their own ‘tagged’ headers would still be including in the database where they are located) – help them provide their users with relevant information.

On a side note, GPS (Global Position Service) enabled mobile phones (cell phones) are also growing in popularity (and, if you phone doesn’t support that service yet, some services such as O2 in the UK offer a ‘find-me’ service by voice): wouldn’t it be handy if you were to be able to stand anywhere in the world and instantly be able to find out where the nearest cash point (ATM), pizza restaurant, taxi service or book store was? And how handy it would be to be able to get directions to that area?

Once enough sites have been “GeoTagged”, I can see search engines making use of this information to a large degree and new services launching to offer GPS orientated “find-me” services.

Conclusion

GeoTagging your site may not have many immediate benefits, but in the medium to long term will have a wide range of benefits to commercial and non-commercial site operates alike – and the earlier a site is “tagged” the more ‘ingrained’ into the various search engine databases it will be.