A lot of marketers back in the day believed that adding geo coordinates (latitude and longitude) to a photo would somehow signal to Google to boost your rankings.
To test this theory, several studies were done – and they consistently showed that businesses who tried this saw no measurable improvement in rankings. In some cases, rankings even dropped. You can go down the rabbit hole and see the studies for yourself here.
Even Google’s John Mueller chimed in about it on Reddit:
“No need to geotag images for SEO.”
Seems pretty clear to me.
Yet, there are some people who say it still matters, but I don’t think they know that the war’s already over.
Either that, or they are just trying to sell you something.
Just think about it…
Does it really seem logical that all you would need to do to outrank the competition is plug in some latitude and longitude information, and shazam! – Google, with all of its infinite knowledge and 183,000 full-time employees, would say, “Woohoo! Now that we finally have the coordinates of this photo, let’s hand over some higher rankings!”
If that was the case, it would be too easy to game the system. People could upload thousands of photos – or even mass-produce AI-generated images – just to stuff in coordinates and try to trick Google.
I don’t think so.
It looks like to me that the folks who are claiming that geotagging works need to pony up some real evidence so others can validate it – because they never seem to back up that claim with proof.
Meanwhile, the people saying it doesn’t help rankings have been pretty clear and forthcoming, sharing scientific studies that prove it does nothing. Even Google weighed in.
In my opinion, the burden of proof is on the people making the claim – and so far, they haven’t delivered.
Your time is better spent on what does move the needle: strong content, accurate local listings, backlinks, and good on-page SEO. Geotagging photos just isn’t one of them.