Networks

One of today’s particularly popular innovations is geotargeting, which uses a user’s location information to direct local advertisements and other marketing tools to them. Search engine optimization is based on many more things than incoming and outgoing links these days, and geodata is now one of the current major contributors to a site’s PageRank. Often the user’s location is found by looking at their IP address, which is an identification number used whenever a user is connected to the Internet. The IP identifies both the host address (which can be thought of as a house number) and the network address (which can be thought of as a street number).  Aside from IP addresses, geodata can also be found by looking at other signals such as the location of incoming links, traffic information, document text and language, etc.

Webmasters can use the location of their web host and server to increase traffic to their site from specific areas and also increase their PageRank in that area. Additionally, search engines such as Google use pattern-detecting algorithms in accordance with geodata in order to provide more accurate search results. For instance, a user may type in “Chipotle Restaurant” hoping to find the nearest one. Since the user did not specify a location, and if the location of the device in use cannot be found directly from characteristics like an IP address, Google can estimate a more specific answer based on the user’s previous search queries.

While this helps people to get a more direct answer to what they are looking for and can direct important local information to their accounts and mobile devices, the same science is being used to do more than product advertising. It turns out politicians are hopping aboard the train as well, and they are using geotargeting to promote their campaigns. Targeting voters according to their location is nothing new to politicians, but geotargeting takes it up to a completely new level. One major occurrence of this was at a Minnesota State Fair last year. At the time, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s U.S. campaign worked with Google to track smart phones located in the area of the Minnesota State Fair. Together, they coordinated ads that accused the then-DFL 6th Congressional District candidate Tarryl Clark of raising taxes on fried foods, and they directed them straight to the fair-goers. “‘People would be standing in line for a corn dog, looking at their smart phones and see this,’ said Google political account strategist and Minnesota native Rob Saliterman. ‘That’s the definition of direct messaging.’”

After reading that anecdote, you had one of two reactions: (1) “Wow! That’s awesome! I love getting instant information about the things that I care about!”, or (2) “Wow…that’s creepy. Maybe I should turn off my phone’s location services…” So what’s a 21st century person to do? Put simply, you can either suck it up, accept the fact that every second your person life is becoming increasingly public, and enjoy the cool perks of location services and social media. Otherwise, you can get rid of all your electronics, move to a forest, build a tree-house, become self-sustaining, and be at peace while you destroy all connections to the outside world.

http://politicsinminnesota.com/2011/10/geo-targeting-will-play-big-role-in-%E2%80%9912-elections/

http://aussieseo.com/seo/seo-benefits-of-geo-targeting/