Saturday 14 April 2012

Searching for Clues

A moment of your time, if I may....

Now that everything on the internet is location based and so called clever, it is getting increasingly difficult for someone in France (for instance) to know how effective web pages are when it comes to search engines used in the USA, Australia, England or any other country. Add to that the fact that not all brains are hardwired like mine and people may use different words to search for the same thing, and it becomes obvious that maybe our business website could be more visible on the internet.

Therefore it would be really helpful if some of you could go to your search engine of choice (google, bing, duckduckgo, whatever) and type in the sort of words you would use if you were coming to France and wanted to see stuff in the Loire Valley.

If you use your own words, then post a comment telling us: the search engine you used, the words or phrase you used, and where we appear in the list of results, that would be very useful.

I thank you.

In the meantime, here are some photos which I like, but haven't found an opportunity to post:

Chaumont sur Loire taken from behind Onzain,
a distance of almost 3 miles. Early morning March 2012
The Roman "thing" at Cinq Mars la Pile,
taken from the garden at Villandry
Célestine at Villandry
Simon

p.s. I am extremely pleased to have had the opportunity to write this - for a split second yesterday it didn't look as if it would get to be written. If it hadn't been written it would have been entirely due to the idiot DHL van driver who - in the pouring rain - pulled out to overtake a truck on a blind corner, forcing Célestine and I off the road. He seemed happy to tell me he had missed me (like he had anything to do with it) by "one mm". I think it was less.

p.p.s. I tried to email a report about this to DHL, but the mail was not delivered because "account is full (quota exceeded)"

11 comments:

Niall & Antoinette said...

Very very glad you and Célestine are both ok! Would keep trying the DHL email... htye need to know what kind of idiot they have driving for them.

Pollygarter said...

Glad to hear that Célestine is unharmed - oh, and Simon too!

ladybird said...

Sounds like you had a very narrow escape and I'm relieved to read that you're alright. Hope you'll soon recover from the shock! DHL drivers are notorious for their dangerous driving.

Sheila said...

I Googled the following:
Sights Loire Valley France
Loire Valley France
Touring Loire Valley Castles
Loire Valley driving tour
Many,many touring sites, but not
yours. I went as far as the 2nd
page.

chm said...

I ixquicked Touring the Loire Valley and your site appears on page 4 [see email].

Niall & Antoinette said...

Simon - tried you experiment and Googled: 'loire valley chateaux history tours' and got nothing: 3 pages.
Then tried adding 'luxury' still nothing -- 3 pages
Only if you Google; 'loire valley classic car tour' do you appear about 5 or 6 down on 1st page.

hope this helps

The Beaver said...

Simon
http://www.google.ca/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Loire+valley+classic+tour&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=bo6JT_3CMqHa0QGZ7bz0CQ#hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=Loire+valley+tour+citroen&oq=Loire+valley+tour+citroen&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.3...12618l14328l1l14650l7l7l0l0l0l0l107l592l6j1l7l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=f3d2ab8b1b23e494&biw=1317&bih=862

You come in numero uno by typing:
"Loire Valley tour citroen" in the search window of google using Safari on my Mac

chm said...

You’re n°18 on page 1 with duckduckgo.com when I ask Touring the Loire Valley.

Simon said...

Thanks everyonr for looking. It just goes to show how location changes things. Even with history disabled (etc) tehre are results here I can't duplicate.

Also thanks for the concern, although I am slightly miffed that a certain lady gets mentioned more than I do ;¬)

Diane said...

I put in Loire Valley Travel into Dogpile.com and you were 12th down the first page. Dogpile searches all search engines and it said this was picked up from Yahoo and Bing.
Pretty good I would say.
There are some hopeless drivers out there not just DHL!! Diane

Jocelyn said...

I googled Loire valley tours. Your excellent Tripadvisor reviews came up on page 3. By page 13 your site had still not come up.

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