One thing that we have noticed at CBD-Search, while processing new submissions, is that there are a lot of churches without any form of location details on their website.

Many websites don't need to list an obvious address, but for websites that exist to promote a specific location (e.g. bookshops, churches, local councils), surely it is counter-productive to not include an address.

We have also noticed, in some cases, that some church websites do not even mention the city or state that they are located in. The only use we can see for these particular sites is that the church is wanting to have a website that only their own members know about. This is difficult to believe though as some of these websites have been expertly designed and are surely intended for more than this.

In many cases, the name of the church's town is part of the name of the church (e.g. Mytown Baptist Church), but once again, that town could be in any state of most any country on earth....

You may respond that people can always use the site's contact-us form to find the church's specific details, but I would then respond that if I was looking for churches available in my town (or a town that I intend to visit), I would not be very likely to contact all of these sites (and there seems to be a huge number of church sites that do not include location details) just to find if they are located in my country or not.

I would suggest that this must be a common oversight, and that if you have a church site that does not clearly state where the church is located, that you should have the site updated.

I understand that there are good reasons why people prefer to not include an exact address on a website, but any church website should certainly include helpful details like the suburb, town, state and country. Yes, you should certainly include your country! Do not expect that everyone in the world knows the state-names for your country. I certainly don't remember which 2 letter state abbreviations come from USA and which come from Canada.

Again, you may tell me that if I were to live in the USA or Canada, I would know all these abbreviations, but again I reply that the Internet is an international medium and as someone who likes to visit churches when I occasionally travel to other countries, I often use the Internet to find a church to visit.

As a final thought, because your website is advertising a specific location, a very effective way of increasing your searchability on the Internet based on your location, is to include your address at the bottom of each page of your site, even if it is just your suburb, town, state and country. For American churches, I would even include your full state name, as well as the abbreviation, to guarantee searchability by state.

I hope that this article helps, but as always, you are welcome to leave your own comments.