I spend a lot of time on here, here being “t`internet tubes” i tend to take notice of local stuff. If you have not seen it yet Google maps offers a local search feature where you can view everything close to what you are searching for.

Search for something random for whatever city/town you want to have a look at as normal in Google.

Now click on maps (top of your browser) apologies if you are viewing this via your phone, i don`t know how it looks in that format.

Now when you are in Google maps.. just to the right of the search box you should see “Whats around here?”

Clicking that button should bring up all the popular destinations for what you just searched for.

Do you see that little orange fella? get closer in by clicking on that + symbol (probably twice) will bring up a load of orange dots all over that map.

Those dots have been plotted by yocals that have either listed their site within Google Maps or have ben plotted via “street view” references.

Now if you are going to ask “what the hell does all this mean?”

My answer is 2 fold

Firstly not only have you just glanced at everything nearby but now you may well have an amazing array of potential new local ink prospects.

What advantage does this have?

Well from a personal point of view if you are not exhausting local links for citation purposes you are firstly overlooking potential opportunities, but you may well be missing an opportunity to gain or share a link of real relevance within the exact same space that you are sharing online. For example in the UK, there is seemingly a growing market within Manchester for SEO Services and those that are taking a local building opportunity will grow a competitive advantage.

This is of course my own opinion, but those Manchester SEO`s and you in your local space should take a look a little closer to home.

Without going into too much detail i know who my local competitors are and so should you beyond your normal web search. Even for me this Maps method threw up some suprises.

I did try to find a mashup that would extract links without success and the closest i came was when Aaron Wall mentioned a nice little bookmarklet “Simple Google Results” (onlinesales.co.uk).

First and foremost that simple little script is awseome in its simplicity, but alas in this instance trying to grab URL`s from Google Maps it does not serve the purpose. Shame really, but if any of you guys are reading this i would be your first customer if you were ever to develop a paid or unpaid version of extracting links from these results.

I have probably not given the “What`s Around Here?” enough justice.

So if you have landed on a local map from your random search, you can actually dive a little deeper.

You can do this by category

There is no apparent navigation to do this, but if you did click on “Whats Around Here?” you should notice that the search box contains an *

This * is your starting point to search by category

Try a search for *travel agents

This is a popular category so it should throw up all those travel agents in that local search.

This local link building opportunity is just a small facet of what makes up any profile, but i for one will always look here first before venturing elsewhere.

There is a whole lot more to local search than this brief post and is by no means a resource, it is simply highlighting something that you may have overlooked along the way.

10 likely elements offers the next step in local search and you will gain small and big wins via that site.

This is just a test post for hovercards from twitter, if you want to stay up to date with my ramblings hover over my twitter username here @safcblogger.

I am looking to develop something of use when i find the time.

There are other simlar WP plugins that offer a parallel function to hovercards, namely @apture but as ever i am trying something a little different. The question is how can i measure this?

“Wuh Uh Oh Uh Uh Oh Uh Oh Oh Uh Uh Oh”

Okay i have not got a big arse, and worst of all i am not the one.

Something is brewing in the SEO sphere <– that`s not really a term but something that alludes to a congregation of minds so from here on in i reserve the right to call it that.

Short story i am currently a lone voice for what i am about to propose.. A Neutral Ground .. The End.

No really, i rattled off a series of tweets that to me me made sense, to others they would have been just the ramblings of a madman, but recent events have brought to the fore something that has larely gone unchecked, unnoticed or largely ignored.

We have been so caught up in trying to achieve the best we can for our own clients that we forgot to monitor our own backyard. What i mean by that is the recent events of those trying to slip in under the radar and leech off those new to SEO or in this instance those that have been in it long enough but still got slapped, me included.

I was one of the lucky ones if you can call it that, i dare say that many hundreds of others were drawn in under “easy link circumstances” and now we are bearing fruit at different levels because of it.

TopSeos.com

For myself i held a basic listing there, never paid for antything more and never paid much attention to it, it was a free listing, a free link. They put all the leg work into ranking themselves (SERP`s wise) and i hung about in the UK version of the site. Hovering between maybe 9th to 11th.

From their leg work in the serp`s i would get a few phone calls and i am talking about a few, literally 3 calls to my memory that were potential leads.

1 of those 3 converted.

Now it comes to the sticky end of this post.

If i am in eleventh spot how well do you think those in the higher spots are fairing?

More often than not we are creatures of habit and the higher the listed/rated the resource the more likely we are to follow through via a click or phone call right?

Yes me included i would as well.

Which brings me on to the crux of the matter. Who gave this site the authority to list me in the first place? Wait a second it was me! So what of the others ranked there? Surely they must have followed a similar patttern of link events to arrive there?

Maybe, maybe not

Either way we now have a site that for 3 years has mooched into spots that we have chose to ignore in the SERP`s. But wait i said 1 had converted, so it must be serving some purpose?

Yes it is, ultimately it is, so there is something it is doing right but from another point of view it is wrong on so many different caveats that it needs a closer look and thanks to Edward Lewis we as seo`s really can take a long hard look at what is going on.

My last point.

I rattled off a series of tweets (twitter) that to me made sense. A sort of rant come question ask! and i will repeat them again here.

Scoff, Jeer, applaud or whatever you like with them. But if we are to come together they make sense to me.

tweet1

The thing that scares me most about TopSeos.com and Edwards sleuthing is the apparent ease of whic you can set up in a less monitored…

tweet2

industry and probably largely go unnoticed and as a consequence rape businesses of their online spend, there has to be a larger monitor

tweet3

We have the capablility to monitor ALL industry for which we are responsible for and we as seo`s should be a port of call to prevent this

tweet4

We all have our spaces which we monitor daily, so surely when a rogue pops up a community effort should be called upon

tweet5

I think it was @netmeg that alluded to other industries that still make $ from a similar net casting to TopSeos slap a badge on it style

tweet6

But all of us are ultimately competing against each other on some level but with a cumulative consensus similar to recent events

tweet7

why can`t we set up a combatitive effort.. a neutal ground? A port of call? an unbiased forum? a self regulated community to combat the BS

You know when you are searching for those golden links across sites on THAT page that you just know will stand the test of time and provide all the link juice you were looking for only to find it is a nofollow link, that`s not so bad i hear you cry, ok how about a noindex meta tag or if that is not immediately apparent how about an exclusion via Robots.txt?

So you continue to search bruised and battered on to the next potential and it leaves you a little sore knowing you have just wasted no amount of time looking for that one that is going to meet all of the criteria you need.

There are some crazy Robots.txt files out there take a look at Googles (UK) for example;

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /groups
Disallow: /images
Disallow: /catalogs
Disallow: /catalogues
Disallow: /news
Allow: /news/directory
Disallow: /nwshp
Disallow: /setnewsprefs?
Disallow: /index.html?
Disallow: /?
Disallow: /addurl/image?
Disallow: /pagead/
Disallow: /relpage/
Disallow: /relcontent
Disallow: /imgres
Disallow: /imglanding
Disallow: /keyword/
Disallow: /u/
Disallow: /univ/
Disallow: /cobrand
Disallow: /custom
Disallow: /advanced_group_search
Disallow: /googlesite
Disallow: /preferences
Disallow: /setprefs
Disallow: /swr
Disallow: /url
Disallow: /default
Disallow: /m?
Disallow: /m/?
Disallow: /m/blogs?
Disallow: /m/ig
Disallow: /m/images?
Disallow: /m/local?
Disallow: /m/movies?
Disallow: /m/news?
Disallow: /m/news/i?
Disallow: /m/place?
Disallow: /m/setnewsprefs?
Disallow: /m/search?
Disallow: /m/swmloptin?
Disallow: /m/trends
Disallow: /wml?
Disallow: /wml/?
Disallow: /wml/search?
Disallow: /xhtml?
Disallow: /xhtml/?
Disallow: /xhtml/search?
Disallow: /xml?
Disallow: /imode?
Disallow: /imode/?
Disallow: /imode/search?
Disallow: /jsky?
Disallow: /jsky/?
Disallow: /jsky/search?
Disallow: /pda?
Disallow: /pda/?
Disallow: /pda/search?
Disallow: /sprint_xhtml
Disallow: /sprint_wml
Disallow: /pqa
Disallow: /palm
Disallow: /gwt/
Disallow: /purchases
Disallow: /hws
Disallow: /bsd?
Disallow: /linux?
Disallow: /mac?
Disallow: /microsoft?
Disallow: /unclesam?
Disallow: /answers/search?q=
Disallow: /local?
Disallow: /local_url
Disallow: /froogle?
Disallow: /products?
Disallow: /products/
Disallow: /froogle_
Disallow: /product_
Disallow: /products_
Disallow: /print
Disallow: /books
Disallow: /bkshp?q=
Allow: /booksrightsholders
Disallow: /patents?
Disallow: /patents/
Allow: /patents/about
Disallow: /scholar
Disallow: /complete
Disallow: /sponsoredlinks
Disallow: /videosearch?
Disallow: /videopreview?
Disallow: /videoprograminfo?
Disallow: /maps?
Disallow: /mapstt?
Disallow: /mapslt?
Disallow: /maps/stk/
Disallow: /maps/br?
Disallow: /mapabcpoi?
Disallow: /maphp?
Disallow: /places/
Disallow: /maps/place
Disallow: /help/maps/streetview/partners/welcome/
Disallow: /lochp?
Disallow: /center
Disallow: /ie?
Disallow: /sms/demo?
Disallow: /katrina?
Disallow: /blogsearch?
Disallow: /blogsearch/
Disallow: /blogsearch_feeds
Disallow: /advanced_blog_search
Disallow: /reader/
Allow: /reader/play
Disallow: /uds/
Disallow: /chart?
Disallow: /transit?
Disallow: /mbd?
Disallow: /extern_js/
Disallow: /calendar/feeds/
Disallow: /calendar/ical/
Disallow: /cl2/feeds/
Disallow: /cl2/ical/
Disallow: /coop/directory
Disallow: /coop/manage
Disallow: /trends?
Disallow: /trends/music?
Disallow: /notebook/search?
Disallow: /musica
Disallow: /musicad
Disallow: /musicas
Disallow: /musicl
Disallow: /musics
Disallow: /musicsearch
Disallow: /musicsp
Disallow: /musiclp
Disallow: /browsersync
Disallow: /call
Disallow: /archivesearch?
Disallow: /archivesearch/url
Disallow: /archivesearch/advanced_search
Disallow: /base/search?
Disallow: /base/reportbadoffer
Disallow: /base/s2
Disallow: /urchin_test/
Disallow: /movies?
Disallow: /codesearch?
Disallow: /codesearch/feeds/search?
Disallow: /wapsearch?
Disallow: /safebrowsing
Allow: /safebrowsing/diagnostic
Allow: /safebrowsing/report_error/
Allow: /safebrowsing/report_phish/
Disallow: /reviews/search?
Disallow: /orkut/albums
Disallow: /jsapi
Disallow: /views?
Disallow: /c/
Disallow: /cbk
Disallow: /recharge/dashboard/car
Disallow: /recharge/dashboard/static/
Disallow: /translate_a/
Disallow: /translate_c
Disallow: /translate_f
Disallow: /translate_static/
Disallow: /translate_suggestion
Disallow: /profiles/me
Allow: /profiles
Disallow: /s2/profiles/me
Allow: /s2/profiles
Allow: /s2/photos
Allow: /s2/static
Disallow: /s2
Disallow: /transconsole/portal/
Disallow: /gcc/
Disallow: /aclk
Disallow: /cse?
Disallow: /cse/panel
Disallow: /cse/manage
Disallow: /tbproxy/
Disallow: /comparisonads/
Disallow: /imesync/
Disallow: /shenghuo/search?
Disallow: /support/forum/search?
Disallow: /reviews/polls/
Disallow: /hosted/images/
Disallow: /hosted/life/
Disallow: /ppob/?
Disallow: /ppob?
Disallow: /ig/add?
Disallow: /adwordsresellers
Disallow: /accounts/o8
Allow: /accounts/o8/id
Disallow: /topicsearch?q=
Disallow: /xfx7/
Disallow: /squared/api
Disallow: /squared/search
Disallow: /squared/table
Disallow: /toolkit/
Allow: /toolkit/*.html
Disallow: /qnasearch?
Disallow: /errors/
Disallow: /app/updates
Disallow: /sidewiki/entry/
Disallow: /quality_form?
Disallow: /labs/popgadget/search
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/profiles-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.google.com/hostednews/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.google.com/ventures/sitemap_ventures.xml
Sitemap: http://www.google.com/sitemaps_webmasters.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/trends/websites/sitemaps/sitemapindex.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sitemaps/sitemap_index.xml

Yes i know and me and you were excluding a few image directories and maybe a cgi-bin or WP control pages. Apologies for posting the whole file but i wanted to demonstrate the lengths of control even Google is going to, obviously they have an abundance of content, more than you or me but it`s arguably the first thing the bots are looking for when it comes to content discovery, so why not take control of it?.

I am by no means an expert on Robots.txt by any shape, i get the basics and get it to do what i want it to do on a basic level, but after spending a bit of time reading through Sebastians site you get to realize the importance of taking control of how you are letting bots into your content to either index for good or basically steal your stuff. A quick look at Sebastians Robots.txt file made me laugh, Allow: /porn/ Dissallow: /smut/ I know he is testing that stuff as he clearly states but his sense of humour just makes me smile.

A few other sites (links are direct to their corresponding Robots.txt files);

• Digg
• Youtube
• 10 Downing Street
• BBC

Ok you get the picture, all of these sites are taking control of what bots get in, what they index at and to some extent how often they crawl.

Get over to Sebastians Pamphlets and read it from a better man than i.

Click Call Book is now alive and kicking (formerley Holiday Miner) after a lot of blood sweat and tears, well not so much blood but plenty of the other.

Over the past year and a lot of late nights and long coding sessions, some of them of marathon standards i am now overjoyed to announce the appearance of Click Call Book, the UK`s largest holiday comparison website. With over 50 million holiday deals it easily dwarfs it`s nearest competitor and with even more opportunity to scale.

How Does it Work?
From a visitors point of view you simply have to search for a holiday and choose the best one for you that meets all of your requirements and call the associated travel agent free of charge.

From a travel agents point of view, they are all competing on price on the same destinations and are looking to offer their customers the best deals for any chosen destination.

Currently the site offers the ability to compare beach holidays, compare hotels and build a holiday. Again there is room for more comparisons to be added on like ski deals, car hire and cruises but to begin with it will take a measured approach.

Who Are the Travel Agents Involved?
Currently there are 10 carefully selected travel agents involved at this early stage who are all ABTA bonded and ATOL protected ranging from JLM Travel through to the UK`s largest independantly owned travel agent Hays Travel and one of the UK`s fastest growing travel agents and cheap holiday providers Low Cost Sunshine. There are still quite a few more interested travel agents looking to be involved with Click Call Book that have been in touch with me and i will be looking to bring them on board at some stage.

Who Designed the Site?
The Click Call Book design was masterminded by Fhoke who work out of Hampshire and are building an impressive portfolio of clients and Click Call Book is honoured to be amongst them.

The branding and design of the site was brought together by Fhoke and although slightly different now i have tried to keep as close to the original as possible to keep all of the design elements intact. From the build point of view it has been brought together using HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, XML and CGI scripting and apart from the late nights and frustration at times the journey to build has been a long but rewarding one in the testing to the limit of my own skills