[T2DMan]

Farhad of Dolce Vita Restaurant in Central Auckland is the webmaster for restaurants www.dolcevita.co.nz website. We have entered into a Dolce Vita Restaurant Google challenge. The Dolce Vita Restaurant listing on the Time2Dine forum currently ranks 23rd on Google. Who will have the highest listing in a month.

Dolce Vita Restaurant - Google Challenge terms

The challenge is, between the dolcevita and time2dine forum websites, to have the highest ranking on Google.com for the term "Dolce Vita Restaurant".

The competition starts Monday 16 August 2004, and ends on NZT 8am Thursday 16 September 2004.

Background


What value is there of a listing in a high ranking website like Time2Dine - is it worth it to spend $40+GST per month, plus per seat booking fees? Fahad considers that his Dolce Vita restaurant website will be able to rank high for the name of his restaurant, and that in itself will be enough to get traffic to the website.

I am ranked high for Auckland Restaurants, Auckland Italian Restaurants, and many other restaurant related terms. Time2Dine has affiliate websites, and many other websites linked through to the website.

The whole marketing package of Time2Dine makes the listing fees absolutely worthwhile. The Time2Dine website gets between 50 and 700 visitors per restaurant per month. My own listing on the Telecom Internet Yellow pages for a similar $ value was not achieving that per month.

The Time2Dine forum is a great way for restaurants to get free listings. However, the main www.Time2Dine.co.nz site has more traffic per listing because of the better optimisation of the pages - it is not a forum with the overhead of a forum. I am able to hand edit the main Time2Dine pages to specifically optimise them - this is not generally possible with a commercial forum package.

Time2Dine has a formula that enables high rankings on Google for each of the restaurants it promotes. It is also listed on a large number of other websites. The overall formula ensures that the maximum possible traffic goes through the website, to get the most bookings for the restaurants promoted.

[farhad]

I'm in, but remember still google didn't take my pages as the site just finished yesterday. So it's all subject to google take my pages before that date. You know when you submit a url it may takes about a week or sometimes 45 days until they read your pages.

Are you sure you are not going to delete this thread after competition?

Farhad

[T2DMan]

I will most probably move the Dolce Vita Restaurant competition thread to another category in the forum, but it will probably stay.

As I have mentioned to you in emails, when done the right way, Google can see new pages in the matter of one day.

As a helping hand, I have your Dolce Vita Restaurant url on this thread so you will get listed that much sooner.

[T2DMan]

The Time2Dine entry for Dolce Vita Restaurant is first on Google NZ sites only for Dolce Vita Restaurant with their own website at 9th.

With two weeks to go, the Dolce Vita website has to pull something out of the hat to get ranked well and have a chance of surpassing the Time2Dine listing.

Get your restaurant listed with Time2Dine - its much easier for me to get a restaurant ranked high on Time2Dine than it is to get your own restaurants website highly ranked. This is certainly the experience so far with the Dolce Vita website.

You can also contract me to search engine optimise your own site - there are a number of enhancements that I could apply to the Dolce Vita website, certainly in its current state as at 2 September 2004. Hopefully this post will encourage Farhad to work out the extras he can apply to his site, so his site will rank better.

All the best Farhad for your Dolce Vita Restaurant site.

[T2DMan]

The forum listing for Dolce Vita Restaurant is: (Update 13/9/04)

• top of Google.com for "Dolce Vita restaurant NZ"
• top of Google.co.nz NZ sites only for "Dolce Vita Restaurant"
• now 1st - was 4th for "Dolce Vita NZ" -
• now 1st - was 5th for "Dolce Vita Restaurant New Zealand"
• 1st for "Dolce Vita Restaurant Auckland"
• now 4th - was 13th for "Dolce Vita Restaurant"

Now a few tweaks to get those lower placings higher.

Hmmm. I think we are doing something right here.

And the Dolce Vita Restaurants site still ranks low - not in the top 50 for Google.com, although is is 10th for NZ sites only.

[farhad]

accourding to our email today is our end day. firstly the thing that you call trick in here is just repeated text and anyone knows that (read note at the end). secondly you said we still rank low and not even in top 50 which I think you are wrong. for dolce "vita restaurant" we are top 10 nz google.co.nz and for "dolce vita restaurant nz" are top 20 in google.com.



I explained before that if they google takes my page (now I have only one page) and also just a quick note that there is 100s ways for ranking. the only reason that I'm not first yet (will be very soon) is that there wasn't any domain with this name for dolcevita so google rank and some other pages higher but because there is a domain now I will be higher soon google take all my pages. also you mentioned that that you are highest rank for auckland restaurant but I will put other sites higher than you (like menu.co.nz and a few others) just to play a bit so you know still there is some secrect in this business that you don't know

and finaly you updated you page after you saw I'm going very high with the excuse of


Note:
Mike you doing good job but you cheated here in fact when you update your page and put:

The forum listing for Dolce Vita Restaurant is: (Update 13/9/04)
top of Google.com for "Dolce Vita restaurant NZ"
top of Google.co.nz NZ sites only for "Dolce Vita Restaurant"
now 1st - was 4th for "Dolce Vita NZ" -
now 1st - was 5th for "Dolce Vita Restaurant New Zealand"
1st for "Dolce Vita Restaurant Auckland"
now 4th - was 13th for "Dolce Vita Restaurant"
Now a few tweaks to get those lower placings higher.
Hmmm. I think we are doing something right here.
And the Dolce Vita Restaurants site still ranks low - not in the top 50 for Google.com, although is is 10th for NZ sites only.


1st : you put a reapeated text with dudgy excuses
2dn : you give a wrong reports and in fact even in that time we didn't rank low

I accept you winned and leave this to reader and they can check it anytime.

thanks
Farhad

[T2DMan]

The final rankings for Dolce Vita Restaurant are:
(dolcevita.co.nz in red)

• 4th for "Dolce Vita Restaurant" (not in top 40) - Therefore Time2Dine wins
• 1st on Google.com for "Dolce Vita restaurant NZ" (18th)
• 1st on Google.co.nz NZ sites only for "Dolce Vita Restaurant" (10th)
• 1st for "Dolce Vita NZ" (not in top 40)
• 1st for "Dolce Vita Restaurant New Zealand" (not in top 40)
• 1st for "Dolce Vita Restaurant Auckland" (26th)

Which Time2Dine page is ranked higher on Time2Dine - it's the actual restaurant listing, not this "competition" page. Repeated text???? All I was doing was reporting the results for the competition. Nothing to do with spamming. Yes, it does happen to help with ranking to have relevant words, but it was the listing page that still ranked higher for those phrases, not this competition page.

It is all about getting the formula right for ranking well on Google. My initial point of this exercise was to prove that there was REAL value in having a listing on an established powerful domain like Time2Dine. Restaurants that are listed on Time2Dine are generally all top of Google for their restaurant name and some of the various permentations such as mentioned above.

Unfortunately, Google has made it very hard for small business's domains to be ranked well for their business name, and in this case Farhad had some knowledge about how to rank on Google, and still he found it hard. I have found so many restaurant websites that don't know anything about Google, and so rank so much lower than Farhad has been able to do.

It used to be easy to rank well on Google. However, the competition is that much more intense for terms now, and the Google algorithm has become that much harder to crack. Case in point, that my listing is not first for everything

• I did not create separate pages for each term - that would have got the listings higher
• The forum is not the ideal page for getting high on Google - far easier to get higher on the main www.Time2Dine.co.nz pages since there is less "junk" html on the pages.
• for a moment I was 2nd for "Dolce Vita Restaurant New Zealand", to a NZ Herald listing. So an established domain like the Herald is able to kick an otherwise established listing reasonably easily.

I took part in this little competition in fun, actually, the Dolce Vita Restaurant is the winner, since it now has TIme2Dine and its own domain listings for all its details that the world can see that much easier.