Geotagging, simply put, adds location information to your pictures or photos. My expertise begins when this location information can potentially impact your search results. Here is a quick overview of geotagging and impact on search. The short answer is that there is not a big benefit to search results. Latitude and longitude tags really only affect Google Earth exposure right now, which I doubt will bring in streams of new clients. However, the future of mobile devices does hold promise for location-based searches.
Definition of Geotagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names.
Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given location by entering latitude and longitude coordinates into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine. Geotagging-enabled information services can also potentially be used to find location-based news, websites, or other resources.
As Wikipedia mentions, users can find images in desired locations by entering coordinates into a geotagging-enabled search engine. That sounds complicated, but it isn’t.
Pictures on Google Maps & Google Earth
Google Maps and Google Earth are prime examples of programs that can search by location. Users don’t even need an exact latitude and longitude, they can browse regions for results. Take for example Phillip Colla, natural history photographer. The below example from his blog shows images of blue whale photos he has taken and how they appear on Google Earth (application needed to view the Google Earth links) and they also appear in Google Maps and Live Search Maps.
Does Geotagging Help General SEO?
From a search perspective, will these listings bring any more traffic through my website, or revenue through my business? Probably not for the large majority of photographers right now at the beginning of 2010. I do not expect the latitude and longitude tags would help your images or website rank higher in a traditional Google search. More important, is that the photographers who take the time to geo tag also take the time to meta tag. If you are diligent in tagging, your photos should have the best titles, descriptions, keywords, and file names, and that does have an immense search benefit. Read more about entry level search optimization for images.
The Future of Geotagging-Enabled Search
Phones already do it. Take for example the tweet I had last week:
It talks about iPhone and Android users’ ability to use the Near Me Now feature from Google to grab their geographic location and search results (restaurants, bars, ATMs) in the immediate vicinity. This does not help photographers – yet. I think soon this will extend to anything online with a geographic location from businesses to images. Is it worth the money or time investment to tag everything now for the future potential of dominating location searches? I am skeptical.
Tips for Geotagging Images
Phillip Colla wrote a great blog post on How to Geotag Your Photos that he broke down into 7 sections:
- Digital Photos and Metadata
- EXIF Metadata
- The Latitude, Longitude and Altitude Fields in the EXIF Metadata
- Recording GPS Data
- Geotagging: Merging GPS Data Into Your Digital Photos
- Geo Data Flows To The Web
- Geotagged Images In Google Earth
If you want to learn more about how to geo tag, read his post about the products he uses to track his location and sync them to his photos.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
You said
What exactly is a traditional Google search? When I resort to checking my server logs, I see that a lot of the people who find my site do so by searching for the particular locations my photos came from. These are usually done by name ( Rainier, Seattle, etc ), for fairly obvious reasons.
I can say that I’ve been to a lot of local businesses ( restaurants, hotels, etc ) that I never would have known about had it not been for nature photographs posted on Google Earth not too far from those places. For example, here’s a wonderful mountain vista and a great place for a day hike, so I’ll go there, and will likely stop for a well earned dinner on the way home.
I agree that you probably have given business to restaurants, etc based on location-based data (Google Earth). I questioned whether photography business can earn new business based on this data for mainstream photography niches like wedding and portrait photographers. The regional landscape photography you do may be a different story. However, the traffic you currently see is almost certainly from keywords that use the location name and not from the location tags themselves. Great comment though and very valid argument!
Excellent article, I shall try this out.
I think Geo-tagging will be a built-in feature on many future devices and apps so best get to grips with it all.