In 2021 and 2022 there was a huge amount of hype around buying virtual real estate (aka digital land) tied to real locations on Earth. However, the hype was around the profit potential for "flipping" and any cryptocurrency coins (tokens) which were made for the specific platform. Here is one such article from the Dallas Observer in early 2023:
https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts-culture/people-are-buying-digital-dallas-land-16362228/
This article, however, didn't even touch on the more practical benefits of someone owning a piece of virtual land tied to locations on Earth. These include:
any search engine optimization benefits
like the SEO benefits above, any benefits tied to the AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and others
using the land for the platform's purpose such as pinning memories and stories tied to that specific piece of land
creating digital assets on those pieces of land such as designing virtual storefronts to go on empty land in high visibility areas of a particular city
adding digital twins to a piece of land to help facilitate commercial property sales, all the way to itemizing HVAC & plumbing & other aspects which may increase the property's value
helping property developers make raw land look appealing as to the vision of the developer
other benefits specific to the platform
The easiest benefit to pursue is any increase in search engine rankings for keywords (search phrases) relevant to that geographic area and/or relevant to the topic of that land. Regarding the latter, here is an example:
You bought the land relevant to a college sports venue, such as a college football stadium
The land you bought, as a NFT, allows links and wording and images and/or video files to be pinned to that land plot
Any images you took relevant to that college could be pinned to that land plot
Wording (such as memories) then could be optimized for an affiliate link to sell merchandise tied to that college
This assumes that you bought the land plot on an online platform which allows the search engines to crawl the content you add to that land plot
Of course, the main benefit would be for local keywords/searches relevant to any businesses on or near that land plot. The header photo of this post shows a land plot in Dallas Texas. Memories are pinned there for a company which offers video production and event AV services in North Texas. Memories of specific clients and specific events have been pinned there, and the search engines have crawled these memories and their wording & links.
The specific platform also allows memories and images, once published, to be pinned to the IPFS system. Those links aren't traditionally indexed by the search engines, but if some links are sent to the IPFS URL given then it can be indexed & pass along the "link juice" (search engine authority) along with the latitude & longitude. This can help increase organic search rankings and, possibly, give a smaller degree of benefit to the Maps rankings. It is unknown at this time about the AI LLM benefits since this method is so new regarding SEO best practices.
Feel free to reach out with your questions on this. Currently there are about a dozen of these platforms, but not all of them have been tested yet for the nuances needed for local SEO ranking increases. I will do what I can to test new combinations of platforms/images/link types/etc. depending on your specific SEO situation.