Google held a tutorial last week at Where 2.0 entitled: “Searching the Geoweb: Exposing Your Geo Data to Search Engines“. The tutorial was conducted by Google Maps Product Manager Lior Ron, and Google Developer Programs Engineer Mano Marks. Google has been working hard on their search technology for geo-spatial content (like KML files and GeoRSS files). Google Maps and Google Earth allow you to search for a lot more than just an address or city name. Turn on the “Show search options” and change the “Restrict Results to:” “User-created content“. You can search for things like: “Spiderman in New York” or “Peaks near Yosemite” or “Pizza near Chicago“.
As people develop their own content, they might want to make sure Google’s Geo search can find their content. Google has already been crawling the Google Earth Community and looking for KML/KMZ files it finds linked to web pages. But, you might want to tell Google to index your content right away so other people can find it. Google has added a new syntax for “sitemap” files so you can tell it where to look for KML or GeoRSS files. Read more about Geo sitemap files, and the syntax of the files here. According to Lior and Mano, the sitemap will more quickly Geo-index your KML or GeoRSS content if you use the sitemap service. Read more about sitemaps at Webmaster Central. NOTE: as the search index grows, you’ll have to depend on Google to rank its search results so your content appears first. I guess we are going to need GeoSEOs now…
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
need free version of google Earth plus so that i can veryfied my home at this software.
with my best regards