Picture, if you will, typing into Google the words “Restaurants near me” and being provided with a list of local eateries – and all because Google understands what the words “near me” mean, and the websites include geographic co-ordinates directly within their html.

Now imagine that you are that business, and these are exactly the kind of hits you want – local, focused enquiries with none of the noise usually generated by search engine traffic. Whether you’re a restaurant, tyre fitter or theme park, these hits are pure gold, and will increasingly be an essential part of your Internet-generated sales.

If, of course, your website is location-aware. If is isn’t, those potential local clients will be shown the sites of your competition first with yours further down the list, or even missing entirely! Geolocation is the next big thing to hit the internet; it’s already popular among photographers on sites such as Flickr, but soon it will be much more than photos which carry a geotag.

A large part of this new, location-aware Internet is already with us. Geolocation is included with Firefox 3.5 as standard, and is likely to be adopted with other web browsers as new versions are released. The technology used raises no privacy concerns either (unlike the controversy surrounding Phorm and targeted marketing) as no personal data is stored or passed to websites or third parties at all, and your location is only passed if you grant permission to that site. The location is identified by your IP address and triangulation of surrounding wifi signals, so the more “crowded” your wireless area is, the more accurate your location will be. With just a single signal the results aren’t likely to be very accurate at all (my own test put us around 30 miles to the North), but with 4 wireless access points detected by my wifi card, Firefox pinpointed my location to within 10 feet.

You can try this yourself. Install the latest version of Firefox, then surf to Google Maps, then press the Show My Location button just above the zoom controls. Allow Google access to your location, and it should (subject to there being sufficient wifi signals to triangulate) show exactly where you are – right now.

If a web browser knows where your potential customer is, your site needs to say where you are so the two can match up. For a business this can be quickly implemented, and generate hits which come directly from local enquiries which are far more likely to turn into actual customers than your average search query from Kuala Lumpur.

If you want to know more, contact us and we’ll be happy to help.