So we’ve been working behind the scenes on a major upgrade to the InspectorSeek.com search engine, and I thought now was a good time to give y’all a little sneak peek of what’s in store. We just purchased a new, state-of-the-art web server that we’ll be moving the new site to. This server will mean that the search engine is faster to use and more reliable. We’re also working on a lot of infrastructure changes (nearly 85% of the code is being rewritten) to make the site faster and easier to use. And most importantly, we’ve been optimising the new site for search engines and integrating a lot of SEO/SEM techniques into the new system that will both help raise InspectorSeek.com to page one on most “find an inspector”-type search phrases, and also help raise our members’ web pages to page one.
We’re hoping to launch the site in 6 to 10 weeks. For right now you can see the new design and new branding. Keep in mind that this is only a mock-up—certain things are missing (CA provinces, real “about us” text) and nothing works. That said, I think it looks pretty darn good, and our initial user testing has shown nice improvements in the UX (user experience) department.
One last note—the new site will include some “predictive” search features that will automatically pull up search results based on location. So the area that says “Philadelphia Area Inspectors” will be different for each user (if you’re searching from Boston, for example, it will show “Boston Area Inspectors”). I’ll post more about this feature later.
Guys, for InspectorSeek.com to really become a success is up to you. Nick, Chris & I have talked about how it could really take off and get high rankings. For that to happen ALL of you need to link to the site in your link directories just like you link to NACHI. Ideally here is what you need, and you should start doing it now (post here to let people know you’ve done it).
You and the other guys using our hosting service can just add the site to the directory but use Atlanta Home Inspector as the title. You can also set the keywords and the page url for it as well.
Thanks for the tip and I’ve linked Dominic, serving an area with dozens of 40,000-50,000 populated cities instead of one major I linked several different ones on different pages.
The page looks great, but I have one questions. On the mock-up it has some names for Philadelphia area inspectors and then a button for “More Philadelphia Area Inspectors”. What determines who shows up on the first page and who only shows up when a potential client clicks on the “more” button? Why would some inspectors get preferential treatment by appearing on the first page over others?
Good question, Thomas. The new InspectorSeek.com will have built-in geocoding that can determine where a person is searching from based on their IP address. For example, based on your IP address I can tell that you’re in the Hartford, CT metro area, and more specifically you’re in a town south of Hartford (it guessed Meriden, CT). The accuracy for country is over 99.8% accurate, so we’ll be able to show slightly different pages for USA and Canada. The city accuracy is around 81% which isn’t perfect, but it’s the best we can do, and the metro area is somewhat better than that. We will use this data to show InterNACHI members in the area of the person visiting InspectorSeek.com. So when I visit InspectorSeek.com, I will see Philadelphia area inspectors. When you search, you’ll see Hardford area inspectors.
The second part of your question is how we choose the 4 or 5 that are going to show on the home page. This is a tricky issue and we’re trying to handle it as fairly as possible. The system will essentially do an InspectorSeek.com search on the city it thinks the viewer is in, and select the top 5 results for that city to show on the front page. That search is based mostly on location, and then randomized. So InterNACHI members closest to the search location will show up closer (and this is based on your “primary place of business”—not your actual location), but if two or more inspectors are equidistant from the search location, their placement is randomized each time so that the sorting is fair. That means that each member will rotate on and off the front page depending on where people are searching from. When a visitor clicks the “More” button they will see the full search results.
Hope that helps explain the system a little better.