Whats Nearby?

It appears that  there’s a lot of local UK information out there to explore. For instance, I’ve stumbled upon nearby.org.uk – enter your choice of search and access various links (not all working for me) related to the resultant geo location.

As an obscure example I’ve just been looking at information about a church in West Kirby – it’s my nearest one that has church bells. Whilst local church bells might not be of interest to everyone, sites like nearby demonstrate what rich, hyperlocal content is out there.

Use it as research or even embed it in a mash-up local site if you’re more technically minded.

New Brighton – Coming Soon

We acquired another local domain property earlier today – New Brighton a coastal town by the River Mersey on The Wirral. It’s probably fair to say that this once very popular resort has seen better days but things are looking up with a proposed multi-million pound development now more likely.

Little known fact: as a young joiner, my Dad repaired the (long-gone) wooden roller coaster!

Hyperlocal Resources

Just a quick mention of  a couple of hyperlocal sites that you might want to keep an eye on.

In the USA, Matt McGee is sharing his views and useful resource ideas at hyperlocalblogger.com - whilst some of the resources are obviously USA based, it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s out there.

And much closer to home Rob Powell, who is building a local London portfolio that includes his popular Greenwich site, has very recently launched his own hyperlocal site. 

If you’ve got some other resources to share – especially UK related – please do leave a comment!

Update To Local Section

I’ve added a new hyperlocal sites section to the site and detail some of the domains that we publish in this area. Feel free to get in touch if this is an area that you’re interested in.

My twitter

I’m making more of an effort with twitter this year – you’ll find me right here if you think that we should follow each other.

Setting Your Geo Target In Google

I’ve just noticed a change in google webmasters to do with the geo settings.

You’ll maybe know that with non-country specific, top-level domain extenstions like .com .net and .org you can specify within the tools the country that you’d like to associate the domain with.

For instance as my business site is on a .com domain I have indicated that my content is primarily for the UK. If your domain ends with .uk then you can’t say that you’re actually wanting to target USA or Australia, etc.

It used to display the date when you last set the geographical target but that now appears to have gone. That’s a slight shame because it was handy to know when you set it if you’re checking out ranking issues.

I’d suggest that using a .uk domain (whenever available) for a UK centric site is a sensible approach. If you want the equivalent .com then register that too and forward to your .uk

I’ve not come across a definitive answer to how long it takes google to recognise and act upon your preferred geo setting – if there is one somewhere, let me know.