Geographic meta tags: let people know where you are

People have been using the internet to obtain directions for destinations for a few years. I've been using MapQuest to help me find driving directions. It's easy, convenient and mostly accurate and if you're directionally challenged like myself... a real time saver. It was only a matter of time before the search engines got involved. Now you can do a keyword search for a business or location in your area using some of the major search engines and have it displayed on a map for you. You can even obtain driving directions on how to get to that location. Local search features are now available on Google Local (Canada or US), Yahoo Local (US only) and MSN Search's "Near me" (US only). Let me take you on a little tour of one of my favourite places. Give this a shot.

• Go to Google Local Canada.
• Type in Forks into the "What" window.
• Type in Winnipeg,MB into the "Where" window.
• This will give you a list of all possible destinations with the word Forks in Winnipeg,MB.
• Click on "Inn at the Forks".
• The map focuses in on the location for the "Inn at the Forks".

This is pretty slick... but it gets slicker. Underneath the map is the link to view larger map. Click this. To the left of the map is a sliding scale. Drag the bar all the way to the plus sign. This zooms in the map. Next click on the satellite link in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Nifty eh? Nice satellite photo but where's the Inn? Okay so it's not totally up to date. The Forks is one of the neatest shopping and tourist areas in Winnipeg. It's at the forks of two rivers, the Assinaboine and the Red. But that's not the point of all this. I have to admit to being not too sure about how these search engines are mapping these locations. Is it based on a massive database of addresses, like the yellow pages or is it based on geographic meta tags or is it a combination of both? Perhaps someone could enlighten me? However, that being said there is no doubt that incorporating geographic meta tags into your web page design is the way to go. It's also incredibly easy to do. The first thing to do is to determine your location's latitude and longitude (e.g. your library). You could borrow someone's GPS unit do do this but there is an easier and more entertaining way to do this. Multimap.com will allow you to zoom in on your geographic location by either entering your address or clicking on the map and zooming in that way. Try the map, it's fun. Don't have time? Type in your street address in the left-hand corner of the screen. Confirm your location on the map. Don't assume that you will be taken directly to your address. You may have to zoom around a bit until you find your exact location. Next look at your latitude and longitude at the bottom of the map. The numbers you want for this purpose are the ones in brackets. Jot this down. Now you are ready to begin building your code. First have a look at this example for my work web site. Explanation of code. Those of you up on the Dublin Core will recognize the DC.title meta tag. This refers to the title of the web site. Just put your title in place of the "University of Manitoba Health Sciences Libraries". ICBM is a hold-out from the old USNET coding but still a valid way to include location code. Use this in combination with the geo.position tag. Insert your latitude and longitude as shown in the example. The geo.region code is a combination of your country code (CA = Canada and US = United States) and your province or state code. More country codes Province and State codes

• Canada
• United States

The geo.placename is where you should include the name of your city or town and the long form of your province or state. Now it is just a matter of cutting and pasting this code into your web page. Open up your web page editor and place the tags in-between the "head" tags. Wait there's more! You can even do the same thing for your blog! feedmap is a blog search engine which will geographically place your blog on a map. Why? Why not. Once you have incorporated the geographic meta tags into your blog home page or template you can submit your feed or url using the submit page. Why should libraries care? I think it's important to take advantage of the location search engines and our patrons use of GPS systems to direct them to our location. Will it make an immediate difference on your statistics? Probably not. The way I see it, use any little trick you can to get yourself into the search engines and to where our patrons are looking for us. References GeoURL Want to know why it's called the ICBM address? Geo Tag Elements Very nice explanation of the tags. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the idea!