apanter@kawartha.net
Return to Kawartha Internet Users' Group
Panters' home page
Bobcaygeon
'Way back in the summer of '95, I volunteered to supervise a group of students building web sites for the villages of Bobcaygeon and Fenelon Falls. Since the students were paid from taxpayers' dollars, the web pages were limited to non-profit groups, such as the Legion and the Horticultural Society. However, we did cheat a bit, and included business directories for the two Chambers of Commerce.
This was back in the internet dark ages. The toughest part of the students' job was explaining to people just what a web page was, and why it would benefit their organization. Even though the service was free, it was difficult to get input from the community. My "web page designers" spent far more time chasing down information than actually writing code (an experience which was probably more useful to them in the long run). They did a great job, and Bobcaygeon in particular, where there appeared to be more community support, ended up with quite a comprehensive web site. The project was repeated the next summer, but since then the Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon "non-profit" sites have been maintained by volunteers: myself and whichever of the two Panters minor I can rope in.
When the students built the web sites, they also spent a lot of (very tedious) time submitting them to search engines, so that anyone searching for "Bobcaygeon" or Fenelon Falls" would find them. If you go to, for instance, "www.google.com" and look for "Fenelon Falls" or "Bobcaygeon" you will see that their efforts paid off: their web sites still appear in the top ten.
As I said earlier, the pages each originally included a Chamber of Commerce business directory, so once people found the page via a search engine, they could find, for example, a list of local restaurants, with their phone numbers, and, if available, email or web page addresses. When the Chambers built their own web sites at www.fenelonfalls.com and www.bobcaygeon.org, we replaced the directories with links to those new pages. Since then, however, the Fenelon Falls web site has disappeared (it is now a blank page with the message "under construction"), and the Bobcaygeon Chamber page has been rewritten, without the business directory. Both have been replaced by the Kawartha Lakes Chamber of Commerce site at www.kawartha.net.
As "web master" for the non-profit sites, I can track not only how many people visit the pages (we're well past 150,000 in Bobcaygeon), but also what they are searching for when they get there. For instance, in the month of February, the most common search term in the Fenelon site was "cottage", followed closely by "snowmobile". In Bobcaygeon, more people were looking for "fishing". Both sites had lots of searches for "accommodation" (with various spellings). Some of the other words that appear on the list: "marina", "curling", "facilities", "arena". So, we know what they are looking for. But, what are they finding?
The "amalgamated" Kawartha Lakes Chamber of Commerce site has a database of all members, and a very good search facility, so, once there, you can easily find what you're looking for. But, you won't easily find that site if you look for "Bobcaygeon" or "Fenelon Falls" . Try it yourself. Go to a search engine (google, all theweb, dogpile, metacrawler) and search for your business, as if you were a tourist planning your vacation. If you can't find it quickly, neither can they.
One of prices of amalgamation is not just loss of identity, but loss of some very fruitful "sibling rivalry": all area businesses are listed on the KL Chamber page. There will always be a Bobcaygeon (or Coboconk, or Rosedale), if local residents want it to be so. Certainly those are the names people are searching for right now, not "Kawartha Lakes". If you have your own web site, and want people to find it, one of the most important "key words" to put in the search engines is your community name.
The Kawartha Internet Users' Group meets at the Lions' Hall, Main St., Bobcaygeon, at 7pm on the 2nd Thursday of each month. New faces are always welcome.