Google sitelinks are links shown under some sites in a search results page.
Colnect now finally has sitelinks as the following image shows:
To see how it looks now, simply Google: Colnect.
They are supposed to be somewhat helpful in convincing users to click on one of your results and so that's good news for Colnect. I'd like to accredit it to some recent SEO efforts I've made but the truth is one never really knows...
The odd thing is how these links are chosen by Google's "automatic" process. The words chosen for quicklinks are "Stamps", "Phonecards", "Countries" and "Monedas".
The first two seem a perfect choice as they frequently appear on Colnect and are really a part of what the site is all about. The last two are quite a weird twist of Google's algorithm as "Countries" actually refers to the Banknote catalog - countries list on Colnect and the second one goes to the Spanish version of the coins page, rather than the English one.
Any tips on how their "automatic" algorithm works and how I could optimize for it would be appreciated. Until then, I am, as most, at the mercy of the Google gods.
Colnect, Connecting Collectors. Colnect offers revolutionizing services to Collectors the world over. Colnect is available in 63 languages and offers extensive collectible catalogs and the easiest personal collection management and Auto-Matching for deals. Join us today :)
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Collectors on Colnect - over 5,000
Colnect Colnect has passed the mark of 5,000 registered collectors. This is an increase of over 45% from 5 months ago. Considering the lack of true marketing efforts, it is an impressive achievement.
As Colnect allows collectors to manage their personal collection and semi-automatically manage swaps with other collectors from around the world, it's the collectors' own interest to have their collector friends join the site. Why would a collector go through the swap and wish lists of another collector manually when a match to his own lists can be done with a click?
Colnect will expand to more collectible fields as requests come from existing members of the community. There are currently already 5 categories (stamps, coins, paper money, phone cards and bottle caps) and a few more are now being worked on by collectors.
Additional services, most of which were requested by the community, are being implemented and will soon be announced.
Happy collecting :)
How do collectors learn about Colnect?
As Colnect allows collectors to manage their personal collection and semi-automatically manage swaps with other collectors from around the world, it's the collectors' own interest to have their collector friends join the site. Why would a collector go through the swap and wish lists of another collector manually when a match to his own lists can be done with a click?
So what's next?
Colnect will expand to more collectible fields as requests come from existing members of the community. There are currently already 5 categories (stamps, coins, paper money, phone cards and bottle caps) and a few more are now being worked on by collectors.
Additional services, most of which were requested by the community, are being implemented and will soon be announced.
Happy collecting :)
Labels:
collectibles,
collectors,
colnect
Monday, July 13, 2009
The World's Biggest Phone Card Catalog lists over 186,000 phone cards
Happy to announce that Colnect's phone cards catalog, the world's most-extensive phone card catalogs, has now over 186,000 phone cards listed in it.
Amazingly, the catalog keeps growing faster than before, with over 27,000 phone card listed during the last 30 days. By the time you read this post the number 186,000 may already be obsolete.
Colnect's catalog is an endeavor of many collectors from all over the world who constantly work improve it.
Using Colnect's catalog, collectors from around the world can easily manage their personal collection on Colnect and find swap buddies from around the world.
Special thanks goes to all the contributors, editors and translators of Colnect.
Happy collecting :)
Amazingly, the catalog keeps growing faster than before, with over 27,000 phone card listed during the last 30 days. By the time you read this post the number 186,000 may already be obsolete.
Colnect's catalog is an endeavor of many collectors from all over the world who constantly work improve it.
Using Colnect's catalog, collectors from around the world can easily manage their personal collection on Colnect and find swap buddies from around the world.
Special thanks goes to all the contributors, editors and translators of Colnect.
Happy collecting :)
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Google Follows Colnect and Takes off the BETA
In a previous post about what beta means, I've shared my opinion about Google abusing the BETA mark as to render it almost meaningless, as their example was followed by many other companies in the industry. I've decided that Colnect will not follow and remove its BETA mark as the system became widely used by real users.
Now it seems that Google decided to follow Colnect's way and remove the BETA: "We're taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite.".
Yes Google, it's about time!
To those who didn't follow the humor, I doubt it that the post on Colnect's blog made the difference to Google but it's funnier to think that it did :)
Now it seems that Google decided to follow Colnect's way and remove the BETA: "We're taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite.".
Yes Google, it's about time!
To those who didn't follow the humor, I doubt it that the post on Colnect's blog made the difference to Google but it's funnier to think that it did :)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson's Death - Will More Collectibles Be Issued?
Michael Jackson's recent death seemed to have affected many people around the globe. Surely a celebrity of great magnitude, as you can see there are phone cards where Michael Jackson appears on Colnect. Interestingly enough, no stamps or coins were issued with him. Any idea why?
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Collectibles tweets with Twitter
Updates done on Colnect may be found on Twitter. For all collectibles added to Colnect see @ColnectCatalogs. For all edits done by our editors see: @ColnectEdits. General news are sometimes posted on @Colnect but this blog you are reading is more in-depth.
Do you have a Twitter account? Would you like automated tweets in your account about favorite collectibles? Send a direct message to @Colnect
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Collectors Welcomed - A New Welcome Page on Colnect + Usability Issues
Colnect has been said of having an ugly user interface that doesn't fit the cool Web2.0 scene. So in the last week I've been working on many usability issues trying to improve how collectors interact with Colnect. To compliment these additions a new welcome page now greets new comers. Below these pictures you'll find what has really changed lately.
Natural sorting is not straight forward on computer system. When sorting the numbers 1 to 10, too many computer programs will start with 1 10 2 instead of the natural 1 2 3. As natural sorting is not supported by the database, I sought different options for sorting catalog codes which may be anything like P-11b, XPK-987-33, Km#12.11 and whichever combination you may consider. So what is currently done is that all numbers are padded with spaces to some set length and so the database knows how to sort them properly. Don't worry, it's not the original information just a copy of it used for quick searching and sorting.
Another issue now settled is that of searching by 'Name'. This was my mistake to begin with as 'Name' on coin countries list, for example, would search a country name and on the main coins page would search a coin name. Now proper pages would have both "Coin name" and "Country name" search so prevent confusion.
A few duplicate catalogs and duplicate series have been merged using a newly duplicates processing script which would make it easy for editors to report such duplicates and process them.
On the multiple-language front an important change has been made. A user that has never visited Colnect will now have his default language according to his country (conferred by the IP address). That is, of course, if it's one of the 35 languages supported by Colnect. Once a user sets a different language, it's remembered and all subsequent URLs would contain the language letters. So even if a German-speaking collector send a /de/ URL to his Spanish-speaking friend, it'll be converted to /es/ for the Spanish-speaker.
And finally, a new improved welcome page is supposed to make more sense than the previous one. Yes, usability and design have to be re-thought and re-made on Colnect but there's nothing quite as bad as a horrible first impression, so here we go...
Natural sorting is not straight forward on computer system. When sorting the numbers 1 to 10, too many computer programs will start with 1 10 2 instead of the natural 1 2 3. As natural sorting is not supported by the database, I sought different options for sorting catalog codes which may be anything like P-11b, XPK-987-33, Km#12.11 and whichever combination you may consider. So what is currently done is that all numbers are padded with spaces to some set length and so the database knows how to sort them properly. Don't worry, it's not the original information just a copy of it used for quick searching and sorting.
Another issue now settled is that of searching by 'Name'. This was my mistake to begin with as 'Name' on coin countries list, for example, would search a country name and on the main coins page would search a coin name. Now proper pages would have both "Coin name" and "Country name" search so prevent confusion.
A few duplicate catalogs and duplicate series have been merged using a newly duplicates processing script which would make it easy for editors to report such duplicates and process them.
On the multiple-language front an important change has been made. A user that has never visited Colnect will now have his default language according to his country (conferred by the IP address). That is, of course, if it's one of the 35 languages supported by Colnect. Once a user sets a different language, it's remembered and all subsequent URLs would contain the language letters. So even if a German-speaking collector send a /de/ URL to his Spanish-speaking friend, it'll be converted to /es/ for the Spanish-speaker.
And finally, a new improved welcome page is supposed to make more sense than the previous one. Yes, usability and design have to be re-thought and re-made on Colnect but there's nothing quite as bad as a horrible first impression, so here we go...
Labels:
catalog,
collectibles,
colnect,
usability
Friday, June 5, 2009
Google Page Speed vs. Yahoo YSlow
Google has announced Page Speed, a FireFox add-on that will help optimizing your website. Obviously competing with Yahoo's YSlow tool, it's worth it to check out what Google think their do better and help further optimizing Colnect Collectors Community.
A funny first thing I've noticed was the comments Page Speed gave on its own guide page. Maybe it's time for Google to start using their tool ;)
A funny first thing I've noticed was the comments Page Speed gave on its own guide page. Maybe it's time for Google to start using their tool ;)
Labels:
Google,
optimization
Monday, June 1, 2009
Colnect's Alexa Ratings goes up up up...
A previous post about Colnect's ratings on Alexa had been posted about 4 months ago. Colnect's Alexa ratings had kept climbing through the time and
now standing at ~103,000, whereas ~4 months ago it was ~184,000, ~7 months ago it was at ~360,000 and ~9 months ago ~500,000. Climbing up from now on will probably be slower on the absolute numbers but not on the actual traffic which keeps growing and growing as Colnect is offering its services to new crowds of banknotes collectors and bottle caps collectors.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Banknotes and Bottle Caps Google Gadgets
Do you see the random collectibles on the side of this blog? These are Colnect's iGoogle gadgets.
Following the recent addition of banknotes and bottle caps to Colnect, the matching Google Gadgets, showing a random collectible, are now available.
They can easily be added to your iGoogle page, blog or website using following URIs.
Banknotes:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/banknotes
Bottle Caps:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/bottlecaps
The previous gadgets are also available:
Coins:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/coins
Stamps:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/stamps
Phone Cards:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/phonecards
Following the recent addition of banknotes and bottle caps to Colnect, the matching Google Gadgets, showing a random collectible, are now available.
They can easily be added to your iGoogle page, blog or website using following URIs.
Banknotes:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/banknotes
Bottle Caps:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/bottlecaps
The previous gadgets are also available:
Coins:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/coins
Stamps:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/stamps
Phone Cards:
http://colnect.com/integrations/google_gadget/collectibles/phonecards
Labels:
banknotes,
bottle caps,
coins,
collectibles,
collectors,
igoogle gadget,
phonecards,
stamp exhibition
Friday, May 29, 2009
Banknotes for Collectors on Colnect
Banknotes are now available on Colnect and collectors from around the world can manage their personal collection using the catalog offered on Colnect, already with over 15,000 banknotes.
New categories can be added to Colnect and if you're a collector of any mass-produced collectible you are most welcomed to help and add your favorite collectibles.
Over a hundred collectors have helped out to create Colnect's catalogs.
Colnect's phonecards catalog is the world's most extensive, currently with ~157,000 phone cards listed. Colnect's coins catalog is the world's biggest free coins catalog, currently with ~15,000 coins. Colnect's stamps catalog is growing quickly and already has over 68,000 stamps listed. Colnect's new bottle caps catalog already has ~5,400 bottle caps listed.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Collectible Bottle Caps for Collectors on Colnect
Bottle caps are now available on Colnect and collectors from around the world can manage their personal collection using the catalog offered on Colnect.
Colnect's catalogs are created by volunteering collectors and updated constantly. The initial catalog of bottle caps, already with over 5,000 bottle caps, has been contributed by one member of Colnect, Paul Giba.
More categories will soon be added to Colnect and if you're a collector of any mass-produced collectible you are most welcomed to help and add your favorite collectibles.
Over a hundred collectors have helped out to create Colnect's catalogs.
Colnect's phonecards catalog is the world's most extensive, currently with over 155,000 phone cards listed. Colnect's coins catalog is the world's biggest free coins catalog, currently with over 14,000 coins. Colnect's stamps catalog is growing quickly and already has over 68,000 stamps listed.
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