I noticed the other day while looking online at the Cineworld website for local Cinemas that they had started to use location data in their web pages. I was on my iPhone and as I hit the Cinemas page the iPhone asked if it use my location. without physically entering a postcode or location the website displayed 3 closest cinemas. In this case I’m confident the website accessed the iPhones GPS hardware but as I discovered after a short Google, Geolocation browsing is just around the corner and uses IP address data to locate your position. I was quite surprised at how accurate this actually was, try Firefox Geolocation to see for yourself, also try out Google Latitude.

Despite in the example above, saving you one step in your browsing, making browsing and locating the data you need more efficient. Geolocation browsing has marketing and advertising implications. Like PPC Advertising with ability to target customers with specific advertising based on location, allowing websites to have your location data will mean the the adverts you will be presented with will be more likely to be of interest to you. From an advertisers point of view such as affiliate programs etc adverts will be served up more efficiently and improve conversion rates.

With websites such as Facebook and Browsers holding shed loads of information about you, Targeted Marketing is made easier and easier for advertisers. Already, as you browse through Facebook you will only see adverts based on your interest and keywords. Geolocation in browsers will make this more accurate and on the bright side, advertising won’t be so imposing on users as they surf the Internet. What’s next? instead of analysing your traffics data after they have visited you site, could you inteligently assess users as the page loads and dynamically serve up your pages based on their profile?

Also see post on Analytical Software.