Where, Oh Where, In The World Are You?

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By: Doug Bedell

It's happened often enough that we need to call attention to it: The Internet is worldwide and ever-present — but where, oh where, are you located in the real world? Too many sites, we've been discovering, don't bother to let you know where they're based.

When considering the relevance or availability of a given site or services, it's helpful — sometimes crucial — to know where the sponsor or vendor is located.

Here's just the latest example of unfortunate Web anonymity: The Highland Marketing Group (THMG) has a "Web Site Promotion, Traffic Building, & SEO" site. Great. But where's it located? In Scotland, Canada, the U.S. or wherever? We've spent a few minutes trying to discover that, and that's all we're going to spend. Others may hit on the key page of several on the site, but when we (in desperation, practically) went to the Contact Us page, it wasn't working. "[si-contact-form form='1']" is all it said.

For Web communication, this is inexcusable but it's not atypical. Too many sites think they're citizens of the world, which is fine, but don't let you know where-in-the-world they're located, which isn't.

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About the Author

Doug Bedell has a background in journalism and PR and is the owner of Resource Relations LLC in Central PA, focusing on organizational and crisis communication. He’s the community manager of SimplyFair.net, a social network on fairness. On the Web, Doug’s at www.ResourceRelations.com. On Twitter, he’s @DougBeetle.

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