Sites that don't work: Reveal.ca
Greg pointed out a story at the Globe and Mail that covers Reveal.ca:
The creators of an all-business search engine want it to become "the bible" of small business.
"If I want to find a hotel in Banff, I just punch in 'hotel' and 'Banff' and I see a full listing of hotels in that community — not 850,000 hotel listings in Rome, Paris, or Detroit — just in Banff," Mr. Hamilton said.
Mmm...interesting, because when I search for hotel Banff, the entire first page of results are actual hotels in Banff. Since I can't bookmark search results on Reveal, I can't point you to the page of hotels in Banff that they offer.
Read on if you want to know the many, many ways that Reveal.ca breaks all the rules of Search Engine Voodoo.
- Code doesn't validate
I had to override the doctype specification, since they didn't include one at all. Validation shows 39 errors on the front page alone. Don't even get me started on the terrible design and massive use of tables and font tags.
- URL Structure is non-existant
There is no way to browse businesses, either by category or by region. Since I also can't bookmark search results, virtually all the content within the site is invisible to search engines.
- Individual pages use search-engine-unfriendly URLs
You can link to individual entries, like for the Arrow Motel in Banff. The URL used (and the fact that there is no way to get to that page without searching) guarantees that that page will never be indexed (except, ironically, perhaps through the link I just posted).
OK, that's all I can stomach for the moment. Use of JavaScript for links and the unbelievable pricing for a Gold Membership are just some of the additional problems with the site.
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Reveal MLM Ripoff
Invisible Web Sites! Choose Reveal for hosting!
The Reveal sites are completely Invisible to every major search engine!
If you have a Reveal web site just go to Yahoo or Google and search for your company name and check the results. NADA, Nothing, Zilch!
It's like buying a full page newspaper ad that never gets delivered.
But wait there's more.
Now they are offering a real cheapie web site deal for $100.
Considering that the $1,000 Reveal web sites can't be found by anyone imagine how effective their $100 web sites will be.
And if you want to become an affiliate reseller you can get paid a percentage from every other Reveal affiliate that you get to work under you.
Can you spell Multi Level Marketing Scam aka: Amway!
Protect yourself and find a professional web site hosting company and ask for customer references.
reveal.ca
I don't have time today to explain how your researcher missed the point of how we use Reveal
Go into google and ask for jeweler,lacombe then try
auto repair,lacombe zilch
Then go into reveal jeweler response 2 auto repair 12
try the same test to hundreds of items or towns
Reveal works
I am the "researcher". I unde
I am the "researcher". I understand how to build websites. I analyzed Reveal.ca for it's search engine friendliness.
Reveal.ca would be more useful if it actually exposed all that info to Google, with search engine friendly URLs. How are you going to condition the 32 Million people in Canada to use Reveal instead of Google?
What if I want to share the search results for what you've just described? I can do it for Google -- jeweller lacombe (I assume you meant the correct spelling of "jeweller").
But I can't pass on the "results" of a search to someone else on Reveal.ca. And actually, I don't know which province Lacombe is in, so I can't search at all!
Rule #546 of website design: make your searches bookmark-able (especially for large sites).
Feel free to explain further, or you can contact me directly. Reveal.ca is not in and of itself a bad idea -- it's just been implemented badly. I analyze sites professionally for their search engine voodo qualities.
maybe that's the business model...
I imagine their business model is to NOT be indexed, but to force every visitor through the search facility. I can imagine that they anticipate being able to gather more and more visitor info as time goes by (by hook, crook, or visitor stupidity). If they allowed deep linking and indexed into search engines, they would have to compete with the rest of us.
Many yellow pages don't allow website URLs, or only allow them in certain font, place, for a fee, etc.... same story. Protectionism.
Nice site. Found it thru your lazyweb rss inclusion. I'll be back.
Ms. Provider [eroticmassage.blogs.com]
I do believe their current bu
I do believe their current business model is to force use of their site. But their site itself suffers from being "invisible"; unless you have significant money to spend on off-line marketing (never mind online techniques), people are not going to find you in the first place.
This kind of "walled garden" (or protectionism, as you put it) does not work unless you have truly valuable content. My argument is that deep-linking and optimization for searching would actually result in more traffic. With more traffic, the "property" that is their website becomes more valuable.
Actually
They could pay me to analyze and optimize their site! Use the contact form to get in touch, and I'll happily provide a quote or set up an initial meeting to discuss your current (or planned) website.