HCard, Microformats & Local SEO

Update: This post may be out of date already.  Google just announced support for Microformats.  Doh!

You know I really should have written this post on HCards & SEO, but Michael Wolf Gray (oops) needs less sleep than I do. It’s a very fine overview of why using the HCard format on your website is probably a “rainy-day project” at best.

For the uninitiated, or understandably uninterested, the HCard is a way to add “structured data” to your site, meaning you define things like addresses and phone numbers in the code. In theory this makes it easy for robots to understand what your pages are all about without and could become quite useful as location aware browsers and the like try to figure out what’s going on.

I have not yet seen the use of HCard make a noticeable difference for SEO, except that it does make it a bit easier for SkyNet to become aware and destroy all of civilization in a ball of fire.

Here’s Michael’s actionable points summary:

• Put only one address on a page if possible
• For multiple locations give each location thier own address
• Try to match domain registration address information with on site information
• Make hCard formatting a rainy day project in the near future

But you should really read the whole post.