Geo domain / local area guide development

[Edwin]

Thought this might be of interest. Some examples of local area guides on exact match geos. They're all developed out to a greater/lesser extent (I went through a list of all UK cities and visited each URL to strip out parking pages, unresolving domains, domain for sale pages, irrelevant sites and mini sites so everything on the list below is a "real" local area guide)

Pick of the lot commercially looks to be Brighton.co.uk, from what I can tell from poking around the site...

http://www.Armagh.co.uk/
http://www.Bath.co.uk/
http://www.Birmingham.co.uk/
http://www.brighton.co.uk/
http://www.Cambridge.co.uk/
http://www.Canterbury.co.uk/
http://www.Cardiff.co.uk/
http://www.Chester.com/
http://www.Dundee.com/
http://www.Edinburgh.com/
http://www.Glasgow.com/
http://www.Gloucester.co.uk/
http://www.Lisburn.com/
http://www.Sheffield.co.uk/
http://www.StDavids.co.uk/
http://www.Stirling.co.uk/
http://www.Sunderland.co.uk/

BTW, I also de-duped the list (some of the companies behind the above operate multiple city sites - I picked one at random as being "representative" of their platform/offering)

 

[Murray]

I know a couple of those at least are owned by members of the forum, I wont say what I think of them because it wont be very popular.. lol.

Just first impressions clicking on them, Dundee.com instantly stood out as feeling like an authority.

Looking at whois it's owned by Dundee City Council, not a surprise.

The others, some are ok looking, others hmm.. just bad, amateur, untrustworthy.

First impressions are very important & Dundee has it.

 

[Edwin]

We own Cambridge.co.uk

And yes, I know it's u-g-l-y!

 

[Murray]

We own Cambridge.co.uk

And yes, I know it's ugly!

I know you do it's very umm 90's early 2000.

Cambridge is an outstanding name, instant authority you think, but then you click on the site and it changes your mind..

I like the design of visitbritain.com

If I was making a geo site that kind of design would be the goal to emulate.

 

[RobM]

Does Tommy still own glasgow.com? Remember him having that a decade ago.

 

[Bluetram]

I like the design of visitbritain.com

If I was making a geo site that kind of design would be the goal to emulate.

Agreed, the layout of Visit Britain looks a whole lot better than most of the others.

Regarding the main bunch, ran a broken link check at http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/broken-links.php over a few of them, results suggest some housekeeping might be in order.