Website Info Files. For Better Search Categorization.
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 9/16/2015 1:00:00 AM
Sometimes search engines make big mistakes.
One of the great things about search engines like Google is how they've managed to index and categorize just about every web page in existence. It's not an easy process. Search robots need to scan every page they can find, then use the words on the page to try to determine what it's about.
For most sites, search engines are pretty accurate, but sometimes they aren't even close.
There are many reasons a search engine will incorrectly categorize a site, but the biggest problem is a lack of clear information on the site itself. For example, if you created a national review site and the search engines saw the address of one of the restaurants you reviewed, they may think that you are a local site, and that the address of the restaurant that you reviewed is your physical address.
If that happens, the search engine use the restaurant address as your site's physical address, and because they think your entire site is local, people in other cities won't even see you in search results.
Another common problem is the reverse, where search engines can't recognize that a site is a local business, so they don't include it whenever somebody is looking for something local.
One solution is for websites to create a file specifically for search engines to clearly define the purpose of the site.
This would be similar to the standard Robots.txt file, just a simple text file with a series of standardized variables.
For example:
Name=Wilson's Midnight Hour
Local=yes
Category=Restaurant
Address=926 East McLemore Avenue
city=Memphis
state=TN
zip=38126
phone=901-634-5789
SEO experts will tell you that the answer is to simply put those items on every page of your website or on an About Me page, but the fact is, it's still a guess, especially if you have a generic name or multiple addresses on your site. If your restaurant is called "Wilson's Midnight Hour", there's no guarantee a search engine will recognize the fact that your site is about a restaurant.
This isn't meant to replace traditional site crawls, but it does give site owners a way to make it very clear exactly what the site is, without altering the look of the site itself.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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