Author: Ash Nallawalla

About Ash Nallawalla

Ash Nallawalla is a consultant enterprise SEO with a long background in large companies with complex websites. He is a published author of several books and thousands of magazine articles.

IYP ranking check without specifying the state

Local Search SEO No Comments
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While discussing the previous post, SEO ranking of US IYPs across 274 cities, Chris Silver Smith pointed out that Americans are not likely to specify the state abbreviation when searching locally, unless the location name occurs in many parts of the US, e.g. Springfield. So I ran a quick check for (location) divorce attorney across the 274 localities. Here is the result:

Superpages.com improved in the higher ranked results. To save you from opening the earlier post, here is the earlier check with the abbreviated state inserted, e.g. Salinas CA divorce attorney.

For Superpages.com there isn’t much difference in the weighted score; however, for the other sites there are slight differences in positions or they fall out completely.

I did a Bing check as well, which shows good rankings for IYPs not listed above. I’ll upload it soon.

SEO ranking of US IYPs across 274 cities

Local Search SEO 17 Comments
Reading Time: 8 minutes

As the in-house SEO for the Aussie Yellow Pages® Online I follow the local search scene, such as it is, but I rely on the writings of North Americans for detailed analyses of US IYPs.

For example, Greg Sterling. Back in 2007 he wrote Using IYPs as an SEO Strategy, where he wrote about the Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs) being a proxy for search engine visibility through good SEO. In the comments below that post, Chris Silver Smith writes about his time as SEO for Superpages.com and some of the considerations for Google/Yahoo/Bing SEO for IYPs. Next, David Mihm who specialises in Local SEO.

Another local search specialist is Andrew Shotland, who has just published IYP SEO Rankings Report 2009. This article was picked up in my alert for Kelsey Group Blog. Andrew’s rankings intrigued me. I had not heard of some of the IYPs he mentioned – not surprising when they don’t appear high in searches.

  1. Superpages
  2. Citysearch
  3. Yelp
  4. Yahoo Local
  5. InsiderPages
  6. YellowPages.com
  7. BizJournals
  8. AreaConnect
  9. MagicYellow
  10. Switchboard
  11. MerchantCircle
  12. GetFave
  13. Yellowbot
  14. Yellowpages.Lycos.com
  15. Kudzu
  16. Discoverourtown
  17. Loqal.com
  18. Local.Ingenio.com
  19. YellowUSA.com
  20. IAF.net

I have been checking mostly Australian/New Zealand/European IYPs for signs of SEO for two years, but Andrew’s article got me wondering whether you can assess the SEO of an IYP by checking 20 keyphrases across 20 cities. I am writing a review of Axandra IBP 11.5, so I thought this was a good exercise for my project. I didn’t want to replicate the whole exercise both as a professional courtesy and through a lack of time (as well as personal relevance).

Usage is king

For any YP/IYP sale of an ad, usage is a crucial part of the offering. After all, advertisers pay for a listing because they expect consumers to find the listing, contact them, and finally buy. If consumers don’t use the directories, advertisers won’t renew.

Usability experts at an IYP work hard to make the site usable; this only matters if there are users, which is where marketing comes in. Traditional marketing and search marketing are equally important. Brand capital brings in the direct and bookmarked visits; SEO brings in search engine visits; PPC fills in the cracks, (unless you have the budget to cover every heading).

SEO at IYPs

SEO has been neglected at some IYPs, while some actually closed their front doors to the search engines in the early days.  A handful have embraced SEO with gusto (and succeeded), as can be seen in Andrew’s analysis.

A reality that some IYPs face is not appreciated by some commentators; namely, there isn’t a shortage of SEO know-how but there are limited resources to apply that knowledge. I haven’t looked around, but I suspect that a typical, self-respecting IYP is not a LAMP machine sitting under someone’s desk.

Regardless of the platform, IYP developers are usually busy with ongoing feature enhancements, bug fixes, etc and use some respected testing and deployment methodology. This sometimes delays implementing the “obvious” SEO tactic that others are eager to point out. The SEO can’t walk in and ask for an edit to robots.txt, for example, and get it done on the spot.

Scope of the tests

I have been running fortnightly ranking checks of our own top 100 headings across two metros, giving me 248 keyphrases. Why 100 headings (categories)? It’s a round number and as we have over 2700 of them, I monitor only the most valuable ones. It’s good to compare ranking trends with organic traffic measured internally. But this post is not about the Aussie IYPs, so back to the US.

“Valuable categories” – what does that mean to an IYP? Lots of different things, such as:

  • Which categories produce the highest yields ($ per sale)?
  • Which categories bring the highest/lowest revenues?
  • Which categories are churning?
  • Which categories get the most/least traffic?

Inside an IYP, different people might have different lists of valuable categories. The retention manager monitors churn categories; the PPC manager needs to know which categories need more traffic, because they aren’t getting organic traffic; the sales managers want to know where traffic is going to, so that they can sell to those niches; and so on.

Take, for example, restaurants or pizza. In some geos, you can’t sell them an IYP package easily because they are always full and are price sensitive. They get a free listing, anyway, but the ones who take out a display ad reap the benefit of increased visibility. The food categories usually get among the highest number of searches at the large IYPs, SEO or no SEO, so it’s not a priority area for me.

For my IBP review I decided to run four sample tests across 28 US IYPs:

  • 50states.com
  • AreaConnect.com
  • BizJournals.com
  • Citysearch.com
  • dexknows.com
  • Discoverourtown.com
  • GetFave.com
  • IAF.net
  • ibegin.com
  • InsiderPages.com
  • judysbook.com
  • Kudzu.com
  • local.com
  • Local.Ingenio.com
  • local.yahoo.com
  • Loqal.com
  • MagicYellow.com
  • MerchantCircle.com
  • openlist.com
  • Superpages.com
  • Switchboard.com
  • yellow.com
  • yellowbook.com
  • Yellowbot.com
  • YellowPages.com
  • Yellowpages.Lycos.com
  • YellowUSA.com
  • Yelp.com

I say tomahto, you say tomato

I chose four keyphrases:

  • Dentist
  • Divorce lawyer
  • Divorce attorney
  • Doctor

One has to be careful when choosing keyphrases for a test. The larger the IYP, chances are that they have a formal approach to taxonomy. Sometimes, this language is not conducive to SEO because ordinary folks don’t use formal language in a Google search.

Using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to count instances of searches can help. For example, last month in the US, more people used the word “attorney” than “lawyer”. I first opted for “lawyer” for the heck of it (then I tested both).

Breadth of the tests

I wouldn’t be happy testing just the top 20 metros because local search is spread over all suburbs (cities) and that some categories are intrinsically hyper-local, e.g. doctors. I would not do a Google search for Melbourne doctors if I had just moved to this city and wanted one close to my home.

Methodology

The US Census Bureau has a handy list of 274 cities/regions with a population greater than 100,000 people. I chose this list to conduct my tests. One of the flaws in this approach is that some IYPs that are tied to print directories do not cover every part of the US, so including them in a national analysis might be unfair. Therefore, I am not presenting a set of national rankings here. I used the same weighting factor as did Andrew, namely, a #1 ranking is worth 10 points, #2 is worth 9 points and so on. (One could argue about this but it’s fine for this purpose.) I am running the tests on google.com (not .au) from Australia, so there will be some variations compared to tests run in each of the 274 localities.

IYP Rankings Test 1: Dentist

This is a list of keyphrases such as Abilene TX dentist, Boston MA dentist etc for the top 274 localities.

The table above shows ranking instances in the left half; for example, Superpages has 113 #1 placements in the Google SERPs; 24 #2 placements, and so on. In the right half you see the weighted scores – 113 x 10 = 1130, 24 x 9 = 216 and so forth.

IYP Rankings Test 2: Divorce Lawyer

This is a list of keyphrases such as Jackson MS divorce lawyer, Fayetteville NC divorce lawyer, etc for the top 274 localities.

The rankings for this keyphrase set are quite different. Superpages reigns supreme, but IAF.net ranks #2, not second last as per the first test.

IYP Rankings Test 3: Divorce Attorney

This is a list of keyphrases such as Peoria AZ divorce attorney, Fayetteville NC divorce attorney, etc for the top 274 localities. (Yes, Virginia, there is a Peoria in Arizona – I didn’t know this before.)

IAF.net is again in second place after Superpages.com. Magicyellow.com is nowhere for “attorney” but seems to be doing well for “lawyer”. The rest are more or less in similar positions as in the previous test.

IYP Rankings Test 4: Denver Suburbs Doctor

I noted a comment made by Chris Silver Smith on the post referenced at the start of this post:

While Superpages.com is nationwide, they’re not the dominant printed directory provider in every market, and the websites of the dominant provider often have higher traffic levels than other sites for that area. For instance, I’ve seen a number of stats showing that Dex directories (owned by R.H. Donnelley) dominate online yellow pages market share for cities in Colorado where their print directories are dominant.

So I found a list of 92 neighbourhoods in Denver, CO and chose a very local service provider that I’d expect to find in each residential area for sure – doctors. This would give me a feel for the depth of coverage within a major metro.

Boy oh boy. Superpages isn’t dominant here but CitySearch and YellowBook are.

Not Tested

I did not test rankings in Yahoo and Bing. I lie. I started to check the keyphrases across all three engines but IBP kept failing, but it was fine with Google on its own. Something to pass on to the vendor.

Although I have the data, I didn’t have the inclination to test the reverse, namely, for a given locality, which IYPs rank high, or rank at all? For example, not one of the IYPs rank in the top 10 for Birmingham AL divorce attorney, Burbank CA divorce attorney and 49 other localities. Yellowpages.latimes.com ranked high for the Burbank entry, but it wasn’t in my list of IYPs. In this niche, law firms and verticals have the top spots.

It’s well and good to see which IYPs rank high in Google, but do they have market share in the same proportions? I don’t have access to Hitwise USA stats, so compete.com will have to do.

Click the image above to see a larger version.

The fifth site here is IAF.net. According to this tool, Citysearch.com (green line) is declining in visits and Yelp.com (orange line) has just caught up. Yahoo Local (red line) is climbing, while Superpages is slightly declining – it’s the blue line.

Why some rank high

Across my limited testing (and Andrew’s analysis), superpages.com does rank high consistently in the organic search results. Whatever magic Chris cooked up during his tenure there, it’s still working. Without probing too deep or giving away their secrets, here is what I see:

  • Lots of pages other than pure BPPs, for example, they have Amazon and eBay content. More pages for internal links and for bringing in long-tail searches.
  • City guides – each locality page brings in more visits.
  • Coupons and deals – good for repeat traffic.
  • Info-rich BPPs.
  • Good use of nofollows.

Why some rankings suck don’t do well

I’m not naming names, but some of the IYPs not ranking well (or at all) show some of the following shortcomings:

  • The SEO shortcomings are known, and the solutions are scheduled to be implemented soon. ;-)
  • Unusual use of nofollows – blocking a spider from your content isn’t a good idea.
  • Explicit blocking of spiders from your content via robots.txt – see above.
  • No browsable listings (or I missed it) – just a search box.
  • No sitemap.xml – large sites with a lot of movement need it so that Google can pick up changes quickly.
  • Addresses and/or phone numbers that could appear in a Google SERP – means fewer people clicking through to you if they only needed the phone number.
  • Failing to take advantage of HTML elements such as an H1 – the H1 element is less important than having a heading of some kind.

Conclusion

My conclusion is that there isn’t a simple way to rank the US IYPs unless one could check every keyphrase for every heading across every locality.  Google doesn’t like the use of automated ranking checkers and the sheer number of possible keyphrases makes this an unrealistic project.

For example, IAF.net is last in Andrew’s list but in my limited testing it is in second spot within a niche. Perhaps IAF concentrates on selling to the legal category. Too many unknowns for my liking.

From the IYP’s viewpoint, there’s not much point ranking well in headings where it’s difficult to sell a paid listing. They know their valuable headings and they’re unlikely to tell others, but they won’t be identical.

What is certain is that consumers will use Google and other engines (that’s going to be just Bing soon), so it is imperative for IYP business profile pages to appear in those search results. Getting the Google user to click through to the IYP is the goal, for this reinforces the value message. Will they recall whether they found the advertiser “in Google” or “in the Yellow Pages”? There’s a little challenge.

How will you use Windows 7 in real life?

Windows 7 1 Comment
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I played with the Microsoft Windows 7 beta and I am comfortable enough to make the switch from Windows XP Pro. The RTM is out and I am lucky enough to get a copy.

36 hours later I am still downloading Win 7 from the Asia server at about 35 KBit/s on a 1500/256 ADSL connection. 3 hours left to complete. Never mind.

In the meantime, I am thinking about whether I can risk switching from Win XP to Win7 as my primary OS.

Are any of you ready to do that? If you are, how are you addressing:

  • Antivirus, e.g. Norton, AVG (a lot of people use free ones)
  • Image backups e.g. Acronis
  • VoIP/SIP apps e.g. Skype, X-Lite
  • Mobile phone apps e.g. Nokia Suite
  • Twitter apps

I appreciate that the answer is “it depends on whether a particular app has been updated for Vista/Win7” but I am talking about the ones you need to work immediately, e.g. Outlook sync, AV and backups.

Also note – by “you” and “I”, I am really thinking about the early adopters in October – the ones who don’t have MSDN/TechNet or journalist connections, or are not particularly loyal to one vendor.

My initial approach will be to install Windows 7 on a separate drive and add my current applications to it. I know the older apps will probably not work and that the brand name apps might get a free update or not work at all. But I am curious to see if all the little freeware apps I have collected will still work.

How are you planning to make the move to Windows 7?

HP giveaways via 25 websites

General No Comments
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Twenty-five assorted websites, some with a student audience, are participating in a computer giveaway between 12 August and 9 September. I have no connection with any of this, except my friend in NZ Mauricio Freitas of GeekZone has put up a convenient website BacktoSchoolGiveaways that will let you reach all the participating sites. Each site will devise its own competition, so if you are keen, you should visit them all in turn during the period of their contests and try your luck.

The prizes look quite tempting – each site has a prize bundle that includes a laptop, an operating system, some software and a backpack. Good luck.

Unwanted fax spam?

General 7 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you have a non-business fax machine, as I do, you may get unwanted spam faxes from businesses who use UTBox, which is based in Sydney. UTBox has a “fax opt-out facility” which is after the fact, i.e. you can “opt out” after you have received the unwanted fax. The press release says:

To make it easier for those marketers who wish to utilise an online fax broadcast opt-out mechanism we have introduced dontfax.me. dontfax.me is a website where receivers of un-wanted faxes can register their wish to opt-out.

This is not accurate. If you go to http://dontfax.me, you get this unhelpful screen:

Enter the URL? Isn’t this where one can opt out?

I have no idea if there was an intention to provide an opt-out form there, but the source code of the home page is bewildering. Yes, there is nothing else in the code than what you see below:

<table cellpadding=10 border=0>
<tr>
 	<td>
		<img src=/images/logo.jpg>
	</td>
	<td>
			Please enter the URL with the company name included
	</td>
	</tr>
<!--
<tr>
	<td colspan=2>
		Tired of wasting paper with your fax machine? Try an <a href="http://www.utbox.net/fax_by_email/">internet fax solution</a> so that your faxes come directly into your email.
	</td>
</tr>
!-->
</table>


Go Green and Save with RingCentral FaxSo far I have received unwanted faxes from the following companies. If you want to avoid getting faxes from them, use the URL next to them to supply your fax number:

If you know of other opt-out URLs, please add them as comments.

Contact the Advertisers

Here are some contact points for the advertisers in case you want to get in touch:

  • Better Telecom = Phone 131 501
  • Global Rags, Richmond VIC 3121 = Phone: 03 9528 3100. Fyshwick = Phone: 02 6248 6011. (and numerous other outlets in Australia)
  • MDF Cleaning = Phone 1300 633 237 (their removal code ACYC didn’t work and the advertiser when called sounded like I wasn’t the first complainant)

    Unsuccessful attempt to unsubscribe
    Unsuccessful attempt to unsubscribe
  • Messages on Hold = Fax: 08 9260 4445
  • Wine Growers Direct, Port Melbourne VIC = Phone 1800 635 331
  • (Nameless entity, advertising 7 Nights Bali Accommodation) = Phone 1800 851 184. In spite of using the nofax.com.au service below to opt out, they spammed me again. Tried to opt out again on 14 September 2009, but note that this form accepts any random, made-up number and tells you that the number was removed. I found their website – Bali Getaways – the domain is owned by Agora Commerce ABN 20782712830. Contact details can be fetched via the form at AusRegistry.
    Unsuccessful attempt to unsubscribe
    Allegedly successful attempt to unsubscribe

Other Fax Broadcasters

The following don’t appear to use UTBox:

EC Credit Control = Fax 1300 361 080

Why Do They Spam?

Simple, as with email spam, as long as enough suckers buy, it is worth the trouble. I have disconnected my fax/printer from the phone line, so it won’t get any more spam. For those of you who need to keep the fax connected, just hope that the technology will be obsolete soon. That date is overdue.

Change your Facebook privacy settings or get a hot date with your wife!

SEO 2 Comments
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Heard via Mashable that a married man saw an ad on his FB page offering a “hot singles” date with his own wife. Fortunately for him, his wife Cheryl Smith (pictured in the ad on the right) understands technology and both have a good sense of humour. To avoid this happening to you, change your Facebook privacy settings as follows:

  1. Login
  2. Settings
  3. Privacy
  4. News Feed and Wall
  5. Appearance in FB ads = No one

Are teens abandoning Twitter?

Social Media No Comments
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Mashable just tweeted:

15 Year Old Says Teens Are Abandoning Twitter: Where’s the Proof? – http://bit.ly/87uJ2

The article refers to a report by Matthew Robson, a 15-year, 7 months old intern at Morgan Stanley UK about teens abandoning Twitter. Good link bait. This reminded me of another post by Peter Corbett earlier this year entitled 2009 Twitter Demographics and Statistics Report.

Twitter demographics

Quantcast estimates February 2009

 Twitter demographics

Quantcast estimates June 2009

Quantcast Stats

Quantcast.com stats for Twitter are estimates and we know that people don’t always supply truthful data to social media sites. That out of the way, it would seem that the percentage of teens has actually increased from 1% to 5% since February.

My unscientific survey of my two children is that the 18-yo does not have a Twitter account and the same goes for her friends. My 21-yo and his friends do.

StumbleUpon leans on BlogCatalog group administrator

Social Media 5 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

StumbleUpon (SU) is a recommendation (rating) engine. Its users “stumble”, that is, vote for a web page they like. The theory is that most people will recommend pages that most people will consider to be interesting. The reality is that most people who use the web have probably not heard of SU and the ones who have are likely to stumble their own pages or those of their clients. SEOs and anyone who fancies themselves as a social media consultant are heavy users of the SU toolbar, which makes it easy to recommend or thumb down a page while you are looking at it.

So what’s the point to SU? I am not entirely sure, but eBay bought it for US$75M in 2007 and sold it in 2009 for an undisclosed sum back to its founders and some VCs. That was great for the founders but what about the web surfer population? I still don’t know.

When I enable the SU toolbar (I have to login), SU knows my surfing patterns and probably stores the information. If I am the first to flag a site, I get to write a review, but this is always an option for subsequent surfers. I have stumbled fewer than 40 sites, usually when I am reminded about SU by some tweet. SU links are no-followed, so there is no SEO value in the exercise, but there is some traffic value if you get enough votes and rise to the top.

My mind isn’t so vacant that I need the SU toolbar to find me a random, cool site to visit, but I believe there are many people who need such guidance. Each to their own.

BlogCatalog Group

Hartley B. Singer of Winnipeg is (for a few more hours) the administrator of a BlogCatalog group called Stumble.  I am not a member of that group. A few hours ago Hart announced that he is closing down the group because SU suspended his account indefinitely. To quote Hart’s post at BlogCatalog in part:

Your StumbleUpon account privileges have been restricted and the account is under review.

When I enquired to WHY I was under review and my account privileges have been restricted .. I received this reply:

Your account has been suspended for a violation of our TOS, which may be viewed here: www.stumbleupon.com/terms/

A list of the most common reasons for an account being suspended may be found here: www.stumbleupon.com/help/What_caused_my_account_to_be_suspended/

I have reviewed the account in question and must advise you that the suspension will remain in force indefinitely.

You may find it useful to share a link to our Terms in this group – www.blogcatalog.com/group/stumble/ – since other members may also find themselves in breach of our Terms, and their accounts subject to suspension.

Threads from the soon-to-be-defunct Stumble group at BlogCatalog
Threads from the soon-to-be-defunct Stumble group at BlogCatalog

It’s fine for SU to set whatever TOS they want and most people will agree that getting votes artificially doesn’t help anyone. SU doesn’t want its asset to be devalued by spammy votes. Fair enough.

However, I consider their approach heavy-handed and tantamount to bullying (stronger words come to mind). What happened to the friendly-but-firm approach of sending a warning email?

So, the SU accounts of about 4,592 people are under review and possible suspension just because they joined a BlogCatalog group? What do you think?

Bing Maps for Mumbai are seriously flawed

Search Engines 2 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

I will let the pictures do the talking here. I looked at Bing Maps for my childhood home in Bombay, India, which is in the area known as Thakurdwar, South Bombay. Compare the Bing map on the left with the Google one on the right. Click the images to enlarge.

Thakurdwar, South Mumbai on Bing map Thakurdwar, South Mumbai on Google Maps
Look particularly at the streets in the Bing map and see how they seem to go through houses seen in the satellite image overlay. Queens Road (Maharshi Karve Marg) goes through the sports gymkhanas near the ocean! Other roads are also figments of someone’s imagination, perhaps drawn from memory?The little lane that skirts the little SK Patil Udyan (Garden) is Badod St, shown as Badod Galli (Lane) in the Bing map which barrels for kilometres through numerous houses in a straight line!

Many of the streets shown are in the wrong places.
Many of the streets shown are in the wrong places.

Check out for yourself at Bing Maps. (Annoyed that it forces the .au domain on me) Some of the other errors I noted:

  • Queens Road goes through the gymkhanas.
  • Apollo Bunder is near Regal, i.e. inland.
  • Salsette Island is near Flora Fountain and also near the Hanging Gardens.
  • Colaba has fallen into the ocean.
  • You get a Churchgate and a Church Gate.
  • Nariman Point has also moved Inland and Fort has moved south of it.
  • Khet Wadi also has a second clone.
  • There is a fixation with all these Wadis on the map, as if they are major roads.
The Google map doesn’t have these problems. The street names are not spelt correctly but are near enough.

2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: AU and US Compared

Marketing Social Media 2 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Thanks to Tamar Weinberg for alerting us to an update by Peter Corbett about Facebook demographics for the US. The main learning there is that the number of 55+ year-old users has increased by 513% since the last check six months ago.

I don’t know if similar Australian stats have been published yet, but I just compiled them using the same Facebook source – compose a dummy ad, then you get the screen where you can view statistics by selecting or unselecting various parameters.

facebook statsI was unable to see the Interests data but I have placed Peter’s latest data to the right of the Australian figures. While Peter’s total count of the US user population is almost 72M, today I see just under 70M for the US. Did 2M close their accounts within the past five days?  Were they fake accounts that were cleaned up? Just in the past 30  minutes the US total has shot up by about 300,000 people. What gives?

Australians on Facebook

About 6M Aussies are on Facebook or at least have opened an account. The gender breakdown is almost identical to the US. The age distribution in the US steadily increases between 18 and 54, whereas Australia peaks in the 25 to 34 range.

The user distribution among the Australian cities follows roughly the population distribution patterns, but we have a large number of Unknowns (and/or country residents). When you look at the small size of the San Francisco user population you wonder if these locations are based on what the user selected (I believe this is the case), or Facebook knew which locations to group into the closest metropolis. In most social networks I enter “Melbourne” as my location, not my suburb; however, if I were entering my postal address (at some trusted site and I could see some point to it), then the stats would be more accurate. In Australia, few people live in the central business district, which bears the name of the city, so that may explain Australia’s large number of Unknown locations in FB.

We are either coy about our education or are less educated than the Americans. The spread between singles, marrieds and in a relationship is almost equal, but those currently engaged seem to have very little representation on Facebook.

Bear in mind the probability that some people enter bogus details at such sites, and some nations more so than others. So treat the analysis accordingly. In my limited experience of my own network, Facebook users interact largely with their real-world friends and are less likely to fake too much.

Check out Peter’s post for a detailed insight into the US figures.

Google Maps adds real estate search

Search Engines No Comments
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As of today, you can search for your next house on Google Maps.  To do this, begin at http://maps.google.com.au. Click the link to the right of the Search Maps button, labelled Show Search Options. Once you do so, the link will change to Remove Search Options and you will see a drop-down menu, where you should choose Real Estate.

You can refine the search by the usual controls you see at a traditional real estate site, such as Rent/For Sale, type of dwelling, type of bedrooms, number of bedrooms, car parking spots, area, and so on.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpSoAue9bf0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmaps.google.com.au%2Fhelp%2Fmaps%2Frealestate%2F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
If you are browsing, just enter a street or suburb and you will see balloons indicating properties for sale.  When you drag the map, the listings on the left will change to reflect the map window. You can explore any of them.

Google Maps real estate search
Google Maps real estate search

Clicking More Info in the speech bubble leads to detailed information about a specific property. Google has partnered with numerous real estate agencies to obtain the listings. Undoubtedly, the incumbent real estate website companies will be wondering how their traffic and revenues will be impacted by this Google innovation.

SEO Permalink for WordPress – the real deal

SEO 3 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I must credit my friend Prashant Karandikar tipping me off to an intriguing post entitled “Many SEO Experts Give Wrong Advice Regarding WordPress Permalinks” by Weberz-Rob. That’s a great linkbait title if you ever saw one, particularly when he began naming these well-known SEOs who gave this “bad advice”, such as:

For good measure, he also listed other well-known SEOs who weren’t giving this “bad” WordPress permalink advice but had “bad” URLs, e.g.

So how does this unknown (to me) person presume to give advice to the A-list of SEOs? Read his post for the details, but he has WordPress Codex on his side. It says:

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to start your permalink structure with a numeric field, such as the year or post ID.

The permalink structure of this blog used to be:

/%category%/%postname%-%post_id%.html

So, this was not the optimum URL structure according to the WP Codex, as the code would waste time evaluating whether a URL is a post or a page. Now this blog is not heavily visited enough for me to care about fractions of a second, but I like to use best practices. I have opted not for the advice of Weberz-Rob or the WP Codex, but the following:

/%postname%-%post_id%.html

I agree with Andy Beard‘s comments in that post and have also settled on the filename ending in .html because I’d like an easy .htaccess solution for my indexed pages that would otherwise lead to 404s. Removing the %category% from the URL was easy.

Revised .htaccess

This is what my .htaccess file looks like:

Options +FollowSymLinks -Indexes
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteRule ^[^/]+/([^/]+)\.html$ https://www.netmagellan.com/$1.html [NC,R=301,L]
 # BEGIN WordPress
 RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
 RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
 RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
 # END WordPress
</IfModule>

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