Posts Tagged ‘meinestadt’
Meinestadt.de: Event calendar grows by leaps and bounds
14 Oct. 2008 | Author: As of recently, the city-portal meinestadt.de has provided its users with an event calendar, listing local parties, concerts and events in chosen locations (see our post). This feature was recently expanded.
As outlined by allesklar.com AG, the operators of meinestadt.de, in a press release at the end of September, the new cooperation with the German ticket-agent CTS Eventim was announced. This collaboration has beefed up the portal’s offering of its popular ‘top events’. Additionally, users can now book their tickets to many events through a link to eventim.de.
A week after the above announcement, the Events feature was further augmented, as listed in a press release, where three further partnerships were presented. The partners who join the providers of interesting events for the calendar are cultural information service kulturkurier.de, and the two party portals tilllate.com and nachtausgabe.de.
The new cooperation partners differ from each other, according to allesklar.com AG, particularly via their content orientation. kulturkurier.de specializes as the largest online-information service for top-level culture events in Germany. And the two party portals feature numerous complementary part events among their separate contents.
The event calendar of meinestadt.de is to be found under the menu item “Freizeit/Veranstaltungen“. One can also register additional events at no cost to the user.
Meinestadt.de soon to offer local news
From September 2008, users should be able to keep informed about all local news, using the new feature of meinestadt.de. The town and city portal plans to integrate local news on its current town-pages website.
Local news will be provided by the Web 2.0 news platform webnews.de, where registered users can link to local and regional news pages, as well as uploading self-created articles. The operators of meinestadt.de, Allesklar.com AG, refer to the cooperation in a press release.
The cooperation between the two operators is not however limited to the integration of news – Allesklar Media, a unit of Allesklar.com AG (launched in May 2008) will also in the future be marketing webnews.de.
SUMAXX: meinestadt.de on top again
Every quarter, the online marketing agency Bloofusion publishes ‘SUMAXX’ – an evaluation of the search-engine spectrum covering a range of websites in various thematic areas. One of these areas is that of ‘local search’. The analysis for 2Q 2008 has recently been released.
The upshot shows meinestadt.de as the big winner. In the first quarter of 2008, this city-portal had slipped to 10th position (see our post). Now, they are back at the top. Another player to improve their position is the online-directory Gelbeseiten.de – still in place 3, but now ahead of its competitor GoYellow.de, which has slipped back 2 slots.
Improvement has been demonstrated by the local search engine suchen.de, who moved up from 7th to 5th place, and also by the telephone directory DasÖrtliche.de, who improved by one position to 8th place.
Bloofusion explains the SUMAXX-Ratings are currently offered for 5 thematic areas: local search, tourism, medicine & health, electronics and financial services. In order to evaluate these, the search engine marketing specialists submit approximately 500 differing search requests (for example, ranging from “doctor Munich” to “interest homebuilding”) to Google, MSN/Live and Yahoo! The generated results are then evaluated and rated, showing which websites in specific thematic areas predominate, whether as a consequence of search machine optimization or search engine compatibility of their algorithms.
The full report is available free from sumaxx.de.
Posted in Local Search per PC, Local Search, Studies, News, Local Search Engines | 
Tags: Bloofusion, Branchenbuch, Branchenverzeichnis, dasoertliche, Google, GoYellow, lokale Informationen, meinestadt, meinestadt.de, Städteportal, suchen.de, Suchmaschinenmarketing, SUMAXX, Verzeichnisdienst | 
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Media Directory Association awards “Branch Oscars”
The Association of German Information and Directory Media (VDAV) recently presented the German Directory Media Prize 2008.
As reported by the VDAV, the winner was announced during the VDAV-BranchMeet, a congress of the German directory media industry, which took place from 18 -20 June 2008 in Bremen. The ‘Branch Oscars’ were assigned in three categories for especially innovative products and applications.
In the ‘Electronic Directory Media’, the victor was the free mobile phone navigation Ö-Navi, a product of DasÖrtliche. This free software has been on offer by the telecommunications directory portal since mid-2007, with which one can effectively convert a mobile phone into a navigation device. Financed entirely through adverts, the user receives not only a route description, but also has access to the entire online-database of DasÖrtliche, therewith all private and business addresses and is able to connect this data to the navigation interface.
The decision of the award for second place was deemed problematic by the 6-person jury, resulting in a tie for 2nd place. The first of the ’silver’ prizes went to the mobile version of meinestadt.de. The mobile version of the town-portal was praised by VDAV, according to its operators Allesklar.com AG, especially for its wide-spectrum offering of local information, including their mobile ’situations vacant’ section and the ability to receive job training classifieds, via free SMS.
The 2nd ‘Silver’ trophy went to the online-cooperation between the association “gesundheitstadt berlin” (en=’health city berlin’) and the branch portal “gewusst wo” (en=’knowing where’). The operators of gewusst-wo.de, the publications group Beleke, announced this in a press release.
Alongside the digital sphere, prizes were also awarded to print media and marketing-events. All prize winners can be found on the VDAV website.
Posted in Local Search on the go, Local Search per Mobile phone, Local Search, News, Practical features |
Tags: dasoertliche, DeTeMedien, Handy, Handynavigation, lokale Informationen, meinestadt, meinestadt.de, mobile lokale Suche, Navigation, Navigationsgerät, Ö-Navi, Städteportal, VDAV, VDAV-Branchentreff, Verzeichnisdienst, VerzeichnismedienPreis |
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meinestadt.de now offering photo tour
The city portal meinestadt.de is now offering its own improved image of Germany’s towns and cities. Recently it started offering a so-called “Photo channel” for each town.
This new feature allows users, for example, to take a virtual tour of many German towns and communities, via a slide show. Additionally one can also access various thematic categories in the search for different visual motives. One comes across photos of buildings, castles and monuments, and also art, people, landscapes and animals, as well a the expected general townscapes.
However, in addition to viewing photographs, viewers may add their own. According to a press release from the operators of meinestadt.de, allesklar.com AG, all amateur and professional photographers are able to publish their town views. Photos can be uploaded with titles and supporting information reflecting the subject matter, and the name of the photographer is also published.
The new town photo album feature is really nice – even though photos are not geo-tagged, and therefore not linked to specific locations on the map. This mean that if one comes across a photo of interest, it is not always easily linked to its actual geographic location (yet.)
Euro 2008 Specials on local search services
The soccer Euro2008 has started. Many local search services are offering their users special Euro 2008 features, in honor of this grand event.
The city portal meinestadt.de for example, in its local online event calendar, lists times and locations of live TV broadcasts on large screens in public places (a.k.a. “Public Viewings”), as well as broadcasts and Euro 2008 parties in pubs or beer gardens, with listings of start times, locations and contact details. According to a press release, all schedules are also available for download via the portal’s mobile version. In a Euro 2008 Special, one can also check out the game schedule and much more.
Google has also put together an additional Fan portal. Accessible via google.de/23tage, the user can find, among much else, a Fan Map with lots worth knowing about Euro 2008 (e.g. teams, players, games and stadiums). A press report by Google Deutschland, posts also a personalized iGoogle Fan start page with loads of information about the contest, the participating teams and even a YouTube Fan Diary that one can add to.
Internet online directory YellowMap offers soccer fans a special Guide to the festivities, in cooperation with online-portal Raumobil, the Mitfahrzentrale [en=Ride sharing] and Quoka. Offers include information about the game-cities, with aerial views of the eight stadiums, a ‘tip’ game and a route planner. In addition, one can reserve hotels and accommodation in Austria and Switzerland, or nearby the hotels where the teams are bunked, and even offer or search for rides to the games.
On the City24 city portal, one can find the games schedule along side with stacks of news about this pan European sporting mega event. Here too, one can find the locations and details of public viewings or parties on offer. Further, users may personally add local parties and events around Euro 2008, using the so-called ‘CityScout’ feature.
The participation of users is also found as expected on Qype. The local search and rating platform, in its own blog, calls for users to add listings and reports on public viewings or sportsbars. Find these under the Groups search term “euro2008” or the Guides listings.
Sharing soccer-mania with other fans is made possible by the local search machine suchen.de. Here, one simply enters search phrases “Public Viewing” or “Sportsbar” plus a location, to discover where the games are to be broadcast in public places or bars.
Extensive listings of Public Viewings and Sportsbars are also to be found on the online directory DasÖrtliche.de and DasTelefonbuch.de. Both services offer a special search feature on Euro 2008, in cooperation with “Premiere Sportsbar”. DasTelefonbuch.de also allows its users to participate ‘virtually’ in the festivities – using the so-called “Virtual-Kicker League“. Whoever participates and wishes to ‘appear’ against other online-soccer players, can register online and receives a Player-Pass. According to DasTelefonbuch-Servicegesellschaft, the virtual game schedule parallels exactly the real Euro 2008, including all preliminary games. The parallel victories and defeats will run alongside the actual events.
Posted in Local Search per PC, Local Search, News, Local Search Engines, Practical features |
Tags: City24, DasTelefonbuch, DeTeMedien, EM-Features, EM-Special, Europameisterschaft, Fan Map, Google, google maps, GoYellow, lokale Informationen, meinestadt, meinestadt.de, Public Viewings, Sportsbar, Suchdienst, suchen.de, t-info, YellowMap |
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SEO for local search services: a fiercely contested battle for the top rankings
Recently the latest edition of the Search Engine Marketing Index SUMAXX was released. In the category “local search”, much has changed in the period since the last analysis.
Although there are numerous local search services, many users, seeking local search results, continue to use the web-search giants Google and Yahoo. Therefore it is important for operators of local search and online branch directories, to have their services reflected in the generated results (of the giants). For this sector, SEO (search engine optimization) is the magic word. SUMAXX indicates those providers who have successfully optimized their pages, frequently being found among the top results of the most important German web search engines,
The rankings (including local search services, among many other branches of the business) are assembled quarterly by the Search Engine Marketing agency Bloofusion Germany GmbH (see an earlier post). The 1st Quarter 2008 results are now available.
In the segment “Local Search”, Bloofusion notes much movement in the first 3 months of 2008, in comparison to the last quarter of 2007. Stadtbranchenbuch.com and goyellow.de have moved up two places to places one and two respectively. The online-directory gelbeseiten.de also has attained improved SEO, thus shunting up five positions to the new #3 position, followed by cylex.de and yahoo.com. The big loser with respect to SEO, according to SUMAXX, is the city-portal meinestadt.de, which slipped from position 2 to 10. On the other hand, the highest rank newcomer is local search machine suchen.de, which moved up nine places to position 7. Yellowmap.de also managed to find its way into the Top Ten in place 8. The ninth ranking was gained by dasoertliche.de
meinestadt.de adds new local information
The city-portal now offers improved local weather information as well as information about walking routes.
As of the beginning of April, meinestadt.de, in cooperation with a new partner, MC-Wetter (MeteoGroup), has unveiled new information concerning local weather conditions. Under the “wetter” [en=weather] link, one is now able to find weather forecasts for the coming five days for every German town and region, as well as current conditions, such as relative (perceived) temperature, ‘Bioweather’ or pollen count.
In addition, on the start page, a further new partnership with wanderkompass.de [en=’wander compass’], provides a special section dedicated to walking/wandering/hiking with regional and national updates and news. In a press release, the owners of meinestadt.de, the firm allesklar.com AG, lists over 1,200 foot routes all over Germany. This feature can be found for every German town, city or community under “Reiseführer” [en=Travel Guide]. However, the offering is as yet not complete in its coverage of all towns and regions, for foot-route information. Recently, for example, for Stuttgart, only links to national footways were displayed.
