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A Google Webmaster Help thread once again confirms that Google ignores the geo-meta tags. Those tags somewhat look like this and use to serve the purpose of telling search engines where the site is based:
<meta name="geo.placename" content="United States" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="x;x" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="usa" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="x,x" />
Google ignores them, and has for a really long time. JohnMu from Google confirmed this most recently in the thread:
We generally ignore geo-meta tags like that because we've found that they're generally incorrect (copy & pasted from a template, etc).
But we had confirmation of this when wrote that Bing relies on these geo-meta tags to determine a site's location. And time and time again, there are webmasters who find there site targeted to the wrong country because of that template issue. In that post, Google's Matt Cutts said the same thing:
Historically, meta tags for language and country have been less reliable than inferring the language or country directly. For example, lots of webmaster also just copy/paste from a friend's template without checking the meta tag values. The unreliability of the meta tags is why Google tends not to use them or give them less weight.
So three webmaster points here:
(1) Google ignore the geo-meta tag (2) Bing currently uses the geo-meta tag (3) Be careful when you copy templates or use pre-existing templates
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
Michael
09/29/2009 08:36 pm
What is the ICBM tag for? I assume it's not intercontinental ballistic missile...
No Name
10/02/2009 11:57 am
Michael, it looks like it is indeed from the old ICBM missile address. see the history here : http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/ICBM-address.html -- I find it sad that we cannot use this nice way to share information just because too many people make mistakes !! Ford didn't stop to make cars because people crashed them, he added seatbelts ;)
imma
01/25/2010 09:42 am
A good seatbelt in this case could be to include the address of the file the meta tag applies to, so a copy paste would show the wrong file & be easy to detect. Kinda wasteful of space, but then seatbelts are inconvenient to put on, but worth it ;-)
Walter
03/01/2010 06:31 pm
Meta Tag ??
Nathan C.
04/13/2010 07:59 am
Which is better for SEO meta geotagging or microformat geotagging, or both?
A Guard
05/01/2010 02:34 pm
Excellent information. I had not seen anyone else talking about this before. Thank you!
mitrovici
07/25/2010 08:26 pm
is better to put geo meta-tag to your website, not for google, because google ignore this meta-tag, but for another search engine , like bing, this meta-tag metter http://mitrovici-seo.blogspot.com/2010/07/google-ignore-geo-meta-tags.html
deljob
09/28/2010 09:59 am
who can tell me,how to use that Geo meta tag
Denish
10/10/2010 03:56 am
HI. Its really very thankful to give that such important information. But i would like to know the way to insert geotagged meta ? Please give me live example if there is any Thanks Denish
Honig Schmidt
11/29/2010 10:01 am
As Denish said. Wounderful information, which is hard to find in German, but I would like to see an live example, too. Thx
John
12/18/2010 12:18 am
Thanks. The Bing vs Google summary was really useful.
Net-Telco
02/22/2011 09:55 am
There are sites available that will generate the html for you and show where the co-ordinates point to on google maps so you can't go wrong. Try mygeoposition.com.
Farhan
03/25/2011 10:07 am
really it helps me alot. i dont knw abt this thing amazing post
arjungehlot
03/31/2011 09:38 am
Great article! Thanks! I guess that Google doesn't currently rely on GeoTags but with the increase in small shops that are starting to offer services on the social web and the whole "geolocation" google might soon start doing the same. Better to be prepared... Plus its only like 4 lines of code.
PingBerry
03/31/2011 06:50 pm
great articles!!!!
hellokeykey
04/26/2011 03:53 am
Google can get it by IP
Kavita
05/19/2011 03:42 am
Thanks for the post. Even if google does not consider geo meta tag I think it is better to add if another popular search engine Bing uses it
Morten Cms Pedersen
05/23/2011 12:12 am
I wonder why Bing tends to use this, since they should be able to detect the target country and region by looking at the website content, domain, language and server IP. I guess Bing does a fallback check/guess, if it is not provided, since most websites dont set or use this attribute.
Z_mi7
06/12/2011 04:06 pm
Please give me live example if there is any Thanks
microadvert
07/10/2011 11:53 am
it good-thank microadvert
Ricky Strode
08/10/2011 03:25 pm
Awesome, thanks for the information. I really appreciate it.
Imraan
08/10/2011 07:43 pm
can anyone guide me what does this two tag means ?also whats the difference between
Sasa Nikolic
08/11/2011 08:12 pm
Data on the geo location of the site is useful information and should be obligatory items when creating code. Thanks for post.
Andrew
09/04/2011 11:47 am
Hi, Cheers for the useful info. To be honest I never realised there was geo meta tags, until reading your post. I will use them for now on. Cheers
Amke Seo
09/06/2011 11:47 am
thanks for nice information... rally very helpful...
bonus pariuri
09/16/2011 11:34 am
I didn't know about this until now. thanks
Nizam
10/19/2011 05:05 pm
ok... i'm an amateur using Jooma. ow do i set geo tags in Joomla?
Friv
10/21/2011 07:17 am
thanks for share great post. i will add this code for my site.
iezul
11/06/2011 07:24 am
thanks
Soy of the North
11/11/2011 02:34 am
I did not know this. Thanks for the information.
sehrifilm
12/28/2011 12:50 am
geo location of the site is useful information and should be obligatory items
Francois
12/28/2011 12:01 pm
I use Typo3 and an extension called tq_seo which gives the opportunity to use easily the geo positioning option - then I realized that Google is not giving so much weight to the tags. But better to have it and not need it than the other way around. Thanks for the info.
Gerd Naschenweng
01/04/2012 03:51 pm
If you are using WordPress, the easiest way to add the tags is to use mygeoposition.com and then use the WP plugin: http://netweblogic.com/wordpress/plugins/meta-tag-manager/ to add the relevant meta-tags.
JAckdiver
02/08/2012 05:04 pm
You can get all tags from here http://www.geo-tag.de/generator/en.html