A new year - a renewed Gimpsy!

[MC]

Hello,

Some of you may have noticed that Gimpsy has been quite busy preparing for the new year - and now we can show some results!

The full details are available on the Gimpsy Forum (http://forum.gimpsy.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=srchxpr&Number=18&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1) and I will not repeat them here. You can also see Chris Ridings' views (http://www.supportforums.org/article159.html) on those changes. :up:

Following his advice ("I wish Gimpsy would shout about this a bit more"), I will take the opportunity to describe, in detail, how do we at Gimpsy approach communication with users. In a nutshell - we firmly believe in communication and we created one of the widest ranges of options available online:

Live Help
The latest - and most flashy - addition. Although this is not a 24/7 operation - a user in need of assistance is more likely to find a small 'speach bubble' at the bottom of the page than not. The Editors at Gimpsy will be delighted to answer real questions. So far - we are very pleased with this tool.

On Line Help
We consider the online help (as in FAQ and such like) to be an integral part of communication. Gimpsy has a significant amount of information available to users, written in a light hearted way but fully informative. See, for example, the Gimpsy overview (http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/doc/faq/faq_overview.php) or check out the site owner's help (http://www.gimpsy.com/gimpsy/doc/faq/faq_owner.php). Perhaps that explains why we don't get that many Live Help requests :)

Auto - emails
An auto email is, as the name implies, an email that is sent out without human intervention. Gimpsy has an extensive array of such 'auto emails'. They are triggered by events and are fully customisable. Examples of such events are:
- Suggesting a site ---> get an acknowledgement
- Suggestion approved / declined ---> get notification
- Site owner claimed a site ---> get notification
- Monthly auction is about to start ---> get notification

We aim to keep the users and the site owners notified of any significant event. No need to chase us. ;)

Gimpsy Forum
The Gimpsy users have their own forum (http://forum.gimpsy.com) to express themselves. Access to all the boards is available to registered users only. So far - few have taken advantage of this facility - but it's there.

CRM
That acronym stands for Customer Relationship Management, and Gimpsy has its own CRM software. Available to registered users only, one can send to the Gimpsy team a question, a comment or a request. Using the CRM software gives us complete control over those issues and also provides online a complete history of the exchange that took place between the user and the Gimpsy Team. It works just great.

email
Well, we also have an email address, but it is used as a last resort. Not only does it attract spammers but is also difficult to manage. We encourage users to use the CRM - which is so much easier, but we realise that some users have an aversion to registration, so we left this option open.

Well, that would do for one post, I guess :) The next posting will explain how to make the most out of searching at Gimpsy.

I guess you will not be shocked to hear that comments and questions are welcome !

MC

[scottiecl]

Sounds great Mordecai!

Keep that momentum growing- we'd like to see your directory do really well. It is great to see a service like yours growing.

Best of luck!

[scottiecl]

BTW- Jill plugging Gimpsy in today's newsletter with 16,000 subscribers can't hurt either!

[GwenJackson]

Things are really moving along fast! New features have literally been added on a daily basis the last couple months- each one better than the last. :)

[Kal]

Well done MC and team. Welcome Gwen :hi:

[GwenJackson]

:hi: Thanks Kal! Pleased to meet you :)

[scottiecl]

Gwen and Mordechai-

I have a question for you!

I was just reviewing a site that was just added to Gimpsy and noticed the link was a redirect for tracking. Personally, I thought you guys were using text links and therefore have been mentioning it to our posters as an excellent way to get a quality inbound link that would count towards link popularity.

However, the redirect means it will NOT count towards link popularity in the search engines. Can I ask why the tracking?

Gimpsy is a nice directory but it takes a lot of effort to submit multiple sites and I have a feeling that there will be less submissions if the links don't help with overall link popularity. I feel pretty bad for giving people incorrect advice about it.

So, what's up with that? :)

[MC]

Hi Scottiecl!

First - thanks for the compliments and your support!

Now, regarding the question, the situation is as follows:

As you have rightly observed, the OBVIOUS clicking place (the title) goes through a tracking script. However, being fully aware of the importance of back-links, we also have a simple and straight link to the site. It is not easy to spot (i.e. find on screen) as we would understandably prefer that searchers will not use it, but a search engine will find it with no difficulty at all!

Gimpsy is a very young directory - and we work very hard to get established. Having completed the revamp of the user interface, it is now our intention to direct our efforts to the issue of 'spidering' and visibility on other search engines. I can promise some significant changes in the next few weeks - but cannot reveal them now.

At the moment all I can say is 'watch this space' :)

MC

[MakeMeTop]

I can see what you are doing - but using invisible links is probably not a good idea!

<a href="http://www.targetsite.com"><img src="../images/_.gif" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt=""></a>

Is not particularly liked by search engines.

[chris]

MC, you need to url rewrite your tracking script so that each url id appears to be a seperate page. of the top of my head something like /counter/urlnum/1623 and /counter/urlnum/1624.

Then have your tracking script return a permanent redirect to tell the search engines that the page /counter/urlnum/1623 has been moved to the url that you're actually linking to.

According to Google's information they take into account permanent redirects.

[ihelpyou]

hmm MC, take Barry's advice. Further, delete all those invisible links just as soon as possible. When Google finds out, it may not make any difference if you make changes to get more spider friendly because Google may have already penalized/banned you.

[MC]

Thanks, Doug! As I said, we are now working on the whole issue of search engine interface. Your comments are well timed :)

MC

[Alan Perkins]

Hi MC

The invisible links are frowned upon by search engines. Don't wrap hyperlinks around invisible images! IMO the simplest way to achieve what you want to do is to use a direct visible link, and do the click-tracking through a JavaScript onClick handler. :)

You have a few other problems as far as robots crawling and indexing Gimpsy is concerned. e.g. from Google lookup of Gimpsy indexed pages (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=allinurl%3A+gimpsy+site%3Awww.gimpsy.com)
Results 1 - 23 of about 11,400. Search took 0.48 seconds.
...
In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 23 already displayed.23 relevant results in 11,400 ... those randomly displayed listings are sending the spider haywire. This is a big problem that runs to the heart of how you organise your directory. If you are looking at the "whole issue of search engine interface" I would bear that in mind... :)

[ihelpyou]

AND, since link popularity is used by "every" search engine, I'd be making sure you take what Alan says above and get your directory structure organized exactly how the engines like it. Actually, I'd be hiring Alan to help out, unless you have someone in house who is knowledgeable about the search engines? :) This goes right to the heart of whether or not your directory will make a go of it.

[Kal]

Mordechai - have another read of that document I sent you back in May last year :). It contained some recommendations to help make Gimpsy more SE friendly. Also, follow Alan's and Barry's advice above and you'll be back on track in no time :cheers:.

[MC]

True to the post that started this thread - we at Gimpsy want a dialogue. Many thanks for your comments and support.

We are certainly taking your views into account. I hope you'll be pleasently surprised when we finish the next development phase.

MC