An hCard is a standardized way to convey contact and address information to the Search Engines through the code of a website. Think of it as an electronic business card on your website.

While this microformatting is not yet universal, Yahoo has stated that it is useful to them when crawling and indexing web pages and Google has supported the hCard through their Maps API since July 2007. Expect it to become much more widely used in the future, as it makes it easier to clearly give information to the Search Engines, rather than relying on them to find it and interpret it properly from the content on your web pages.

If who you are is important to your site - for example, you are a blogger and people come to your site to read what you have to say - then, an hCard may help them to find your words online. In fact, you can even associate a nickname with your blog or website through the use of an hCard. The hCard format can also be used to associate you with all of your websites and blogs which makes it easier for both the SE’s and humans to make those connections.

If where you are is important to your website, use an hCard to make certain that the Search Engines get it right. In my opinion, this is a no-brainer for a local business where it’s critical that your map locations are correct in places like Google Maps. It can also help to put the proprietor’s name together with the business name and address. For example, your business name may really be Westside Auto Repair, but most people may know you as Joe Budd, the mechanic.

An hCard can also be used to associate yourself with an organization and it’s a way for an organization to associate people with it. An example would be a list of its officers or Board of Directors.

Here are examples of the type of information you can put in an hCard:

  • Full name
  • Nickname
  • Title or suffix (such as Dr. or MD)
  • photo
  • birthdate
  • Post Office Box
  • Street Addresses (you can specify home, work, and preferred delivery addresses)
  • Telephone numbers( including home, work, answering machine, fax, cell, video-conferencing, pager and which is the preferrred number)
  • Email addresses(multiple addresses and preferred address are possible)
  • Email software being used
  • Time Zone
  • Location (latitude, longitude down to 6 decimals designates your location within a meter)

For organizational info, you can add:

  • Job title
  • Logo
  • Organization name
  • Role in the organization
  • URL

Expect to see more microformats in the future. They make it easy for webmasters to communicate pieces of important information to the Search Engines, which can then help human searchers and website visitors.

Use Tantek’s hCard generator to get started with this microformatting on your own website.