Found some discussion going on over at Highrankings about the Microsoft's "Near Me" search option. While this is as one member puts it is "nothing earth shattering", I thought I would highlight how you can get your website included in Near Me searches on MSN and some questions from members about how MSN actually searches for your "location". According to a recent post in the MSN blog, the MSN recommends you format your address like the following on the footer of your page:
1 Microsoft Way Redmond, WA, 98052
MSN recommends implementing this if you website serves a local need, they go on to say that they look for "strings of text that are location references", and that address hold a high degree of confidence as opposed to other parts of text on the page. Unfortunately they are not going to deduct you location primarily from you "About Us" page as these pages do not rank normally well in the index. In order to ensure even further that MSN find you location correctly they recommend you use "capitalization for the city name and state."
I am not sure specifically if MSN can deduct your location if you address is formatted like so, instead of what they recommend:
1 Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052
My guess is that they hopefully have made provisions to deduct your location for this specific format.
Some of the members also question whether " websites hosted on non-local servers?" will be included in Near Me searches and also if local results can be served via the ip address location of the server. While MSN appears not to be doing this, its some interesting thoughts, of what if.
Webmasters inserting an address the way recommended could be helpful for those that serve a local need. Web design firms might also be willing to make a change in order to show up better for local searches conducted for their area. Here is an example of a food bank search, and a web design search for your area.
