Are geo meta tags an SEO ranking factor used in local search?
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Do meta geo tags influence search rankings?

Do meta geo tags influence search rankings? - answered by Matt Cutts

Summary:

Google doesn’t pay much attention to meta geo tags because better ranking signals exist, as far as geographic targeting is concerned. You should pay attention to your domain name (things like gTLD or ccTLD), the server’s IP address and definitely to the content itself. Google Webmaster Tools can also help you in associating a particular website with a geographic area; even if it’s a subdomain or a subdirectory – you can still use this feature for geo-targeting purposes.

 

Matt's answer:

Today we’re going to talk about how do meta geo tags influence search results

 

It is not something that we look at very closely at all. Not meta geo tags. We tend to look at the IP address, we tend to look at the gTLD or the ccTLD, that’s the country code TLD (top level domain, so .fr, .de). There’s also something in Google’s Webmaster Tools where you can say “my site is not just a .com that’s about the entire world, it’s a British .com. Or it’s a .com that really pertains to New Zealand or Australia”. So, you can highlight and say, okay this .com is really about Germany or Canada or whatever your country is.

 

Meta geo tags are not very useful

 

Typically the meta geo tags are not as useful and we don’t tend to give those as much weight, if at all. So, I would spend your time trying to make sure you have the right domain name, trying to make sure that you have the right IP address if you can, and then definitely if you have content that’s geo-located; even if it’s a subdomain or a subdirectory, you can specify that within Google’s Webmaster Tools and say “yes, this is relevant for this particular country”.

by Matt Cutts - Google's Head of Search Quality Team

 

Original video: