A Couple of Quick Notes

Not that any one reads this, but I have made a few changes to Lopico in the past day or so. I changed the title tag so that it is more of a reflection of what Lopico is about than just the name of the site. In my redesign all the title tags (well almost) are being updated. Why you ask? Well if you've read this far and didn't say "title tag, what's that?" then you probably already know the importance of having a descriptive title tag. This is why Cityserch's title is "City Guides by Citysearch" not just citysearch.com, and amazon's says "Amazon.com: Online shopping for electronics, apparel, music, books, DVDs & more." Lopico's old tag was simply LOPICO - Local Picks Online. Doesn't really tell you much, and that was a problem, because search engines put such strong emphasis on title tags. The new Lopico title tag reads: LOPICO - Local Business Directory, Find & Vote For Your City's Favorites. This is much more descriptive and puts a couple of key words right into the title tag. "Local Picks" is the heart of Lopico, but an unlikely search term; according to Overture the only close search that was done in May 2005 was "Pick your own local phone number," whereas Local Business and Local Business Directory have much higher probability of being searched for.

I've really been starting to get a more consistent amount of additions and votes, I'm quite happy with the progress. Also this month my revenue from advertising has taken a turn for the better. I'm very happy with what I've been able to do thus far, and only see it getting better in the future.

I've begun using Google Adword's Site Targeting feature (actually just created a new campaign minutes ago). First impression is that it is very easy to use and hopefully will be a good move for Lopico, however I'll update this in a few days. Also it is clearly a good idea for Google, making advertisers pay CPM is more predictable, and guaranteed.

Lastly, I want to congratulate SNAP, the new search engine that I have blogged about often, for receiving a nice $10M kick from Mayfield (I believe). This is great for a number of reasons; First this is idealab, and idealab has great ideas, and gives the world great products (I've already mentioned two former Idealab companies in this blog), Second SNAP is a great search engine in theory and hopefully this will help SNAP become a great search engine in application. That is probably the most critical thing that I have ever said about SNAP, but for now it is lacking in it's SERPS, not the quality of results but the number of returned pages. At any rate hopefully this will be a good step forward in search technology. I thought up a completely new way to search the web the other day, and hopefully I will see it come into reality one day; if not from myself I'd love to have it be from a real innovator like SNAP.

As Always please add your favorites, the more you add the better we get.