Every part of our economy is being impacted by the economic downturn. For those of us
in the media industry, these times are particularly challenging. At Planet Discover,
we're working with our clients to ensure their investment in local search has a
measurable return on investment. We're confident we have the tools and resources to
help you leverage your content and monetize it through local search.
To that end, we are initiating a monthly e-newsletter to share helpful information – practical information you can put to use on a daily basis – to ensure you are delivering the best possible targeted search experience while generating online revenue along the way.
In this, and coming issues, we will be sharing updates on our search technology and related applications, as well as best practices and guidance on successful ways to monetize local search on your site.
Our goal is twofold: to help ensure our clients are delivering a search experience that keeps visitors coming back to your site, and providing your advertisers with valuable investment opportunities in these tough times.
In the end, if your advertisers are not seeing a return on their investment, you won't see a return on your investment in local search.
At Planet Discover, we pride ourselves on the technology we deliver and the way we go about taking care of you, our customers. Bring us your ideas, concerns or questions, we want to hear from you.
Sincerely
David Lenzen
President and CEO, Planet Discover
Planet Discover is introducing the latest version of its search and advertising software, Search Publisher. A number of improvements are included in the release of Search Publisher 3.9, including new login functionality, improved features to administer Gift Guides, and the ability to customize the boost settings on specific data fields to deliver more relevant search results.
Login
With the new login functionality you'll access Search Publisher using your email address.
As part of the initial process, you will be prompted to create a unique password. Using email
addresses and setting your own passwords will help decrease the number of identities and passwords
you have to remember.
When Search Publisher has been upgraded for your site, existing system users will receive an automated email informing them of the upgrade. This email will also include a temporary password to be used to log into Search Publisher. The temporary password will only be good for the first login to Search Publisher after the upgrade to version 3.9. At that time users will be required to change their password. If we don't have an email address on file, a Planet Discover team member will need to manually create a login for that user.
Gift Guide
Other changes to Search Publisher 3.9 include improvements to the Gift Guide. While clients will
only be able to have one Gift Guide active on their site at a time, additional Gift Guides can be
established and fulfilled before they are implemented on your site. For example, you'll now be able
to begin fulfilling a Father's Day Gift Guide while the Mother's Day Gift Guide is still active.
If you would like to learn more about the Gift Guide application, please contact your Client Service
Manager or Market Development Manager.
Search Relevancy Controls
To help you provide your users with the best possible local search experience, Search Publisher 3.9
allows you to customize the relevancy of individual fields within a content source provided to
Planet Discover. This improvement provides for more granular indexing of data that is being searched
and will return more relevant results for your users. Your Client Service Manager can work with you to
adjust the relevancy controls to meet your specific search objectives.
Your Client Services Manager will be in contact with you to discuss when the upgrade of your site is scheduled. In the meantime, contact your Client Services Manager or email support@planetdiscover.com with any questions.
Over the past several months Planet Discover has worked with our client, Ottaway Newspapers, on a project to redesign directory landing pages for several of the company's websites. Sites involved in the project are www.hudsonvalley.com, www.thepoconos.com, www.seacoastonline.com, www.esanjoaqin.com, www.esouthernoregon.com, and www.finditonline.com.
When our clients at Ottaway approached us with their strategy for the redesign, an emphasis was placed on ratings and reviews along with positioning sites as a trusted source of local information on the Google search engine. The desired result is to improve the Ottaway sites' page rankings in Google search results. The user-generated content modules and local search platform Planet Discover provides for Ottaway help them achieve their goals.
One of the priorities of redesigning the Ottaway business directory landing pages was a broader search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. In addition to promoting local search on their home pages, Ottaway has established a trusted partner relationship with Google, which allows them to submit XML to Google on a regular basis. The XML, which is based on an originating XML feed provided by Planet Discover, includes basic site information, basic and enhanced listing information and reviews. Google then processes the XML to deliver more relevant search results.
Understanding the importance of local search, Ottaway has committed resources to submitting business directory listings to Google in order to improve their national search page rankings. In turn, Planet Discover and Ottaway are working together to help Ottaway become the preferred source of everything local for their website visitors.
The following screenshots demonstrate the results of Ottaway's trusted partnership with Google. A search for "hudson valley pizza" was performed, resulting in high Google page ranking for an Ottaway business directory listing. Clicking on the Ottaway results directs the user to the micro site page for that business listing.
Through continued development and support Planet Discover is committed to helping our clients generate local search revenue. If you would like more information on how to improve your website rankings in Google search and optimize your search engine results, please contact a member of your Client Services Team or send an email to support@planetdiscover.com.
At Planet Discover, our goal is to help our clients Get Results through the power of local search. One question we receive from our clients is, "Why does it take so long for search results to appear on my website?"
While a "black & white" answer seems in order, it's important to understand there is a difference between search time and page–load performance. While these two performance factors are related, they are measured separately.
Search time is the time it takes for various data sources to be searched and returned on a results page. When a website visitor performs a search, Search Publisher, the proprietary Planet Discover software platform, indexes data sources that have been provided by our clients. Currently, the average search time on our client sites is 0.5 seconds.
While search times are less than one second on most of our sites, there are factors that contribute to slower search times. Some of these factors include searching large amounts of data, frequently indexing data, or scraping external sites. Adjusting how often your site is indexed, using data feeds instead of scraping external sites, and more narrowly defining what is indexed can help improve search times on your site.
After the data sources are indexed by Search Publisher, relevant results pages are displayed on your site.
Page–load performance is the amount of time it takes for a page to fully display. A well designed page could load in one to three seconds. Similar to search time, there are factors that contribute to increased load times for results pages. The primary factors we see for slower page–load performance include:
Large Volume of HTTP Requests
Separate HTTP requests are required if images, JavaScript files and style sheets included on a page reside on
external servers. Each of these requests increases the amount of time it takes to load a page. Additionally,
performing HTTP requests sequentially adds further latency to page–load times.
Unnecessary JavaScript
Not all JavaScript code is required for every web page. It's a good practice to review the JavaScript includes
in the header and footer files you provide to Planet Discover. You may be able to eliminate JavaScript files
that aren't relevant to search results pages.
DNS Lookups
Making calls to multiple servers may reduce hosting resources. However, page–load performance is impacted
because each domain name needs to be resolved. Consider whether images, JavaScript files and style sheets
can be consolidated to fewer servers to reduce the number of DNS lookups.
No Expiration Tags
Caching individual elements such as graphics and photos on a page can reduce page–load time. Adding
a "far future expires" tag to each element tells the browser what to cache and what not to cache.
There are tools available for analyzing page-load performance on your site, including browser plug–in tools such as FireBug and YSlow.
Planet Discover is constantly analyzing our software to improve search relevancy, accuracy and performance. Our goal is to help our clients become the preferred source of everything local. If you have questions about search time vs. page–load performance, please contact your Client Services representative directly, or email us at support@planetdiscover.com.
Clients with questions or concerns should contact their Client Services representative or email support@support.planetdiscover.com.
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