Geolocation and other ways of localizing content or resources are becoming increasingly important in a number of application areas, for example in Mobile Services. Our vision of a location-aware Web is a Web where location is first-level concept, being embedded in all core Web technologies such as URIs, HTTP, and HTML. Location as a concept is important for location-based services, the integration of physical items into the Web (a concept that we call the Web of Things), and the association of tagged physical items or identified areas with Web resources. Location as a concept has been recognized as being important for some time, but so far there is no coherent concept of the location-aware Web, and one of our main goals is to contribute to that vision becoming a reality.

Location information becomes increasingly available by embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, cell-based localization in mobile phone networks, and localization using Wi-Fi access points. For certain applications (such as mobile telephony) localization features are even required by law, so that emergency calls can be tracked to the originating location of the call. Increasing availability of localization information of course raises important privacy and security issues, which also need to be addressed.