We’ve been working hard to add the Google maps feature with multiple locations. It’s getting very close to completion. We plan on integrating the maps into all areas of the website. Every event on the events calendar will have a link that opens a Google map showing you the location.

In addtion to that, when you build an itenerary, all events on your itenerary wll be displayed on a single map. This makes it easy for you to plan your day and see which events are located in the same proximity.

The last feature wll be the Points of Interest page that lists different themes (family friendly beaches, cycling trails, top ten sushi restaurants, etc) and all locations based on that theme will be mapped together. This feature should be coming next week once I have time to build the lists.

All in all, having multiple locations with Google Maps should be a great addition to the site!

Take care,

Brian

Problogger.net, a great site for bloggers, is hosting a contest this month to find out what goals people have for blogging. If you’ve ever blogged before, you know that after the first couple of weeks the fun wears off and if you don’t have concrete goals set, then your blog can quickly dry up and go to waste.

My goal for blogging is to create traffic. I created this website to promote the great events in San Diego that are happening here on a daily basis. This is helpful for locals who live here as well as the tourists from around the world who visit every year. Even though I’m going to create the best website I’m technically capable of, I know that I have years before Google or Yahoo will ever send me a sizeable amount of traffic. So I have to find other ways to promote the site.

In the past I did this for my website about Crystal Reports software by participating in multiple web forums and begging people for links. I spent many, many hours of hard work and exercising a lot of patience. After two years I was rewarded with being placed on the top of the first search page by Google and MSN. Overnight, my website exploded in traffic. I can’t believe how much traffic I get now (thank you Google!!!).

Beating Google

I blog to beat Google at their own game. I don’t want to wait another two years in the hopes that Google “might” decide to give me a decent search ranking for what I hope people think is going evolve into an awesome travel site. So why do I think that blogging is the key to beating Google at their own game? First you have to consider why Google isn’t working anymore.

Google has grown from a small dynamic search engine to the leading search engine on the internet. With size comes influence. And with influence comes greed. I’m not talking about the greed of Google execs, I’m talking about the greed of people who want to use Google for their own good (like me!) and send traffic to their site. Some people have legitimate sites (me again!) and others have spam filled sites with the only purpose of generating money. These sites have enormous resources and money to get to the top of the search results and send legitimate traffic to non-legitimate sites. For Google to stay the best search engine, they have a constant battle to keep the spammers away. I think they do a great job of this, but the price is that the site is no longer dynamic like it was in the beginning.

Google implements algorithms more complex than I could ever comprehend in hopes of figuring out which websites deserve to be at the top of the search rankings. But these algorithms are so complex that it’s almost impossible to get promoted to the top unless you hire a professional team to optimize your site just for the search engines. Makes it tough for a Regular Joe with a great site to ever be discovered without spending thousands on SEO consultants and link exchange programs. The end result is that the sites at the top will stay at the top for many months and every time you do a search for a particular term, you see the same results. Why go back to Google when you already know what you are going to get?

Blogs are dynamic search engines

Blogs beat Google at their own game because they are both dynamic and organic at the same time. That’s a great combination. When you go to a website that indexes the blogs, every day your search returns different results. Static search results are a thing of the past.

However, this can be good and bad. Some results are great and some are garbage. But with blogs, the organic aspect also promotes the best sites with the most readers. The blogging community generously links to their favorite blogs so that the community builds. This helps implement a web-based quality control system that isn’t influenced by money or SEO consultants. The cream rises to top naturally.

Not only do I blog here, but I also blog with Day In San Diego on WordPress.com to get cross-traffic. Even though my traffic is very small (very, very, small), it is ten times more vistors than Google sends me (zero). With blogging, I don’t have to wait two years for search engines to list me in their search results. I know that Feedster and Blogpulse will send me new traffic with every post. In fact, my friend recently emailed me to say that the first post on his new internet consulting blog got a comment the same day he posted it. He was shocked to see the blogging community so quick to find him and even give him a comment. This changes everything for the web.

Blogging puts the small guy on equal footing with the biggest sites. Because it’s not about how much money you have for marketing or site optimization - it’s about having good ideas and using your personality to connect with your readers and give them value.

The site has only been up for a couple of weeks and I already did a major redesign. I originally had the pages in a three column format with the middle column being the main content, the right column being recent pics that people email me, and the left column will show ads. The left column is to help pay for site maintenance and development. Creating a site has a variety of expenses and having a way to offset this really helps. But there is one problem with this idea: a site with no visitors doesn’t generate much money. It will be a while before this site starts to attract a loyal base of viewers, so why bombard the people who come here with ads that will never amount to anything? I decided that this wasn’t the best way to go, so I removed the left column. This makes the event listings more prominent and results in a better user experience for everyone.

Does San Diego need another website to track local events?

There are lots of places on the internet that tell you what’s going on in San Diego. But they are a bit disorganized and the information is scattered all over the place. It would be nice to have one site which brings it all together. Of course, we do have www.SanDiegoInsider.com which is a great website. But for me it’s information overload. They cover so many things about San Diego that if I find something one day, I can’t find it the next day. There has to be a happy medium where you can find out about all the great stuff going on in San Diego without being overwhelmed by dozens of other non-related pages. Hence, www.SocialInsider.com was born with the goal of tracking cool stuff happening in San Diego and making it easy to find what you need.

Site Goals
The primary goal of the site is to list each event by day and show an entire week at a time. This makes it easy to see what is happening and you can quickly browse through events in future weeks. The events have to be something I think are interesting. I’m in my 30’s and I figure that if I like it then this will target a large part of the San Diego population.

As I was working on the original site design it occurred to me that it would be great to be able to select the events you like and create an itenerary. Last year I was living in Vancouver BC and when my parents came to visit me, my Mom had all kinds of printouts with tourist info listed on it. Unfortunately, it was from multiple sites on the internet and was very disorganized. I wish she would have been able to create a personal itenerary of just the places she wanted to go. It would have made that week so much more enjoyable. So this site will be what I wish we had in Vancouver.

The secondary goals are to have “Insider” pages and blogs that people can post to about what is going on in San Diego. Local experts can post pages about surfing, cycling, street festivals, etc. The blogs are useful for things like restaurant reviews.

My last idea is to have a Points of Interest page where I show a Google map with related events plotted on it (family parks, cycling trails, best sushi restaurants). If you are doing multiple events in a single day, then this helps you plot the best route for doing all the events. If you only want to do one event then you can see which one is closest to where you live.

Is this worth it?
I have a big project on my hands, but I’m really excited about what it could evolve into. San Diego is loved by locals and tourists the world over. There are so many things happening here that it’s a shame to miss out on great events just because you didn’t hear about them in time. If this site can help people enjoy the city more, then I will consider this to be a success and the hard work will be worth it.

I hope you enjoy the site,

Brian Bischof