innkeeping.org » Award Winners

Review: Lanierbb.com

Innkeeper — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:01:35 +0000

This site, although not particularly eye catching, seems to get decent traffic and create a modest return. A long established directory, Pam Lanier’s is one of the few remaining print directories promoting bed and breakfasts. Membership in the site includes the print listing. Also includes membership via the travelguides.com URL. Recently added “featured” listings seem to be mostly a way of increasing the monetization of the site, especially since their own FAQ page states “Do I have to pay for a better listing, additional placements, etc? - Never! Pamela Lanier insists on a level playing field for all members.”. Interestingly as well, the statistics provided by their innkeeper “check traffic” pages are nearly double those that we collected through our own (multiple) methods.

The Good: Reasonable price for a strong reach. Long time travel guide has great consumer credibility. Search is fast and concise. Most prominent links are to inn website directly.

The Bad: Odd page layout gives a lot of screen real estate to their logo/header. Wordy home page stuffed with keywords. Few internal pages (Inn pages) have pagerank. Bland result pages. Photo gallery is old school and forces open in a new window. Reservation Inquiry form is unnecessary for most inns and confusing for users and innkeepers (emails innkeeper a request).

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 7 years
Main Page Pagerank: 5
Number of Inbound Links: 34,907
AlexaRank: 220,361
Quantcast Monthly Uniques: 45,575
Alternate Domain Names: No
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $159
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $159
Notes about Packages and Membership: Only one package, setup fee of $40. Includes listing in print editions. $89 introductory rate on “Priority Placement” which lists you on a rotating basis on your state, region and city pages for 3 months (for $125).
Quantcast Summary: This site reaches approximately 49,051 U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a mostly Caucasian, more female, primarily older, more educated, more affluent audience.The typical visitor books lodging at bedandbreakfast.com, visits cooksrecipes.com, and subscribes to Food & Wine.

The Site:www.lanierbb.com
Review Date: January 27, 2008

Review: ILoveInns.com

Innkeeper — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:35:17 +0000

The pleasant color scheme of this site is romantic, but not in your face. Original content abounds, including innkeeping tips and information, as well as guest based information. Award style pages are unique and feature inns for free. Reciprocal link program to be “featured” is a low cost way to get into that space. Informative site and articles, with little or no erroneous advertising. A real “hub” of information rather than just a directory.

The Good: Lots of unique content. Articles, stories, contests, they seem to do a lot for the innkeeping community as a whole. Excellent 2 Clicks and I am at the link to your page layout. The inns website links are as prominent as the detail page link. The search includes a map as well as an “AJAXy” auto-complete. Hover-tips include enlarging images and detail information. Social content generation with add to Del.icio.us etc.

The Bad: The Google map integration is either CPU or browser intensive. In repeated tests that function cost almost 5 seconds of pageload and in several instances froze the browser temporarily. Its not that important and not worth waiting for. The auto complete feature for the search function is buggy, selecting the auto completed text doesn’t work cross browser.

Ratings:

A 2008 Gold Medal Winner!

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 7 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 18,043
AlexaRank: 161,367
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - at the $195 package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $135
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $295
Notes about Packages and Membership: 3 Plans are offered, no link to your site before the “Gold” plan.

The Site: www.iloveinns.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008

Review: theinnkeeper.com

Innkeeper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:30:35 +0000

Direct links are most prominent here. Unlike many other sites, the less prominent “more information” link on your listing is to their own site. Reservations tab takes you to the inn reservations program directly, which is a nice touch.

The Good: 2 Clicks and I am at the link to your page. Thats a nice layout. The most prominent link on your ad takes the visitor to your own website, rather than their internal page. Lists guides and affiliations as QA. Concise details screen is easy to read and well organized.

The Bad: What is with the color scheme? Is this the standard B&B color chart? If you notice, this is the 3rd site I have reviewed with this same color scheme, and second with the bland map on the main page. Of course, map search is a good starting point, but spruce the map up a bit and customize it for your site. Not to mention the giant page waste of the image on the homepage above the map. Feature someone up there at random if you’re not going to sell that space!

My Ratings:

Overall Rating:	[rating:overall/10]
Site Design:	[rating:5/10]
Site Content:	[rating:5/10]
Site Usability:	[rating:6/10]
Site Reach:	[rating:5/10]
Browser:	[rating:8/10]
Clicks to Link:	[rating:9/10]
Internal Pagerank:	[rating:6/10]
Credibility / QA:	[rating:8/10]
Value:	[rating:6/10]

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 10 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 10,659
AlexaRank: 848,790
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - at the $249 package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $249
Most Expensive Membership (annual): Only one package offered.
Notes about Packages and Membership: Single membership plan.

The Site: www.theinnkeeper.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008

Review: bbonline.com

Innkeeper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:11:53 +0000

Again, the basic level here seems to be the best for most advertisers. Definitely worth the $149 per year; I don’t know who would really benefit from the $500 package. I couldn’t find a region where that level of service would make sense in my search, other than for those that perhaps still don’t have their own website.

The Good: Webervations integration gives availability information. Nearby Inns are given decent presentation, exposing you to more searchers. This site has the largest internet reach of all, with more inbound links and indexed pages than any other directory to date. The directory is PageRank generous, indexing the internal pages within 3 links of the main page - giving many inn pages a PR of 3 themselves.

The Bad: The internal pages for inns seem almost like a website of themselves. It would be easy for a novice

internet user to mistake the internal inn page as your inns website. To make that worse, the pages are clunky and old school (counter and all!) which doesn’t present well to a web savvy audience.

My Ratings:

Overall Rating:	[rating:overall/10]
Site Design:	[rating:6/10]
Site Content:	[rating:7.5/10]
Site Usability:	[rating:7/10]
Site Reach:	[rating:9.5/10]
Browser:	[rating:8/10]
Clicks to Link:	[rating:6/10]
Internal Pagerank:	[rating:8/10]
Credibility / QA:	[rating:5/10]
Value:	[rating:8/10]

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 13 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 105,866
AlexaRank: 64,276
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - starting at the basic $149 per year package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $149
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $495
Notes about Packages and Membership: 4 levels - featured and state page listings are at highest level, extra photos etc. Basic gives link and 1 photo.

The Site: www.bbonline.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008

Review: Pillows and Pancakes

Innkeeper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:35:50 +0000

A pretty good value at this point in the game. An up and coming site with great recent growth in the reach department. With a solid grouping of pages that have good pagerank and a decent (and growing) number of back links, this site is a great find for its current $99 per year. Ad dollars well spent in my opinion. Of course, YMMV.

My Ratings:

Overall Rating:	[rating:overall/10]
Site Design:	[rating:6/10]
Site Content:	[rating:7/10]
Site Usability:	[rating:6/10]
Site Reach:	[rating:6/10]
Browser:	[rating:7/10]
Clicks to Link:	[rating:4/10]
Internal Pagerank:	[rating:6/10]
Credibility / QA:	[rating:5/10]
Value:	[rating:7/10]

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 3 years
Main Page Pagerank: 5
Number of Inbound Links: 4989
AlexaRank: 511620
Alternate Domain Names: None
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - Basic 39yr pkg
Least Expensive Membership (annual): 39
Most Expensive Membership (annual): 99
Notes about Packages and Membership: Premium membership gets you featured, bold etc.

The Site:www.pillowsandpancakes.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008

Review: bnbfinder.com

Innkeeper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:06:38 +0000

Another solid contender in the market. Worth being listed at the level that gives you a link to your own site. Not really worth it to upgrade here unless your region or city is highly competitive on this site. The direct link to your site should provide the detail that a looker will need, its difficult to keep all of these sites updated, so we tend to shy away from anything with too many photos etc… Good conversion rate from site referrals.

The Good: Reasonably priced packages give you decent exposure at a fair price. Visual organization of regions on graphical map makes it easy for a traveler to narrow down selections. Integration with Webervations makes it easy for guests to see your availability or search for inns based upon availability without participating in a costly GDS program. Main link from results is to your own site, which is a nice plus. Keyword search function is unique. No outside advertising.

The Bad: Clunky and somewhat outdated design. Detail pages are just too detailed, requires that you maintain this site regularly which can be cumbersome. Too much information presented in the single view. Keyword search needs fine tuning to be really useful. Flash overs for Featured properties are clever, but annoying.

My Ratings:

Overall Rating:	[rating:overall/10]
Site Design:	[rating:6.5/10]
Site Content:	[rating:8/10]
Site Usability:	[rating:6/10]
Site Reach:	[rating:7.5/10]
Browser:	[rating:8/10]
Clicks to Link:	[rating:5/10]
Internal Pagerank:	[rating:6/10]
Credibility / QA:	[rating:8/10]
Value:	[rating:8.5/10]

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 9 years
Main Page Pagerank: 5
Estimated Monthly Unique Visitors: 86,333
Quantcast Ranking: 25,111 See Site Statistics
Number of Inbound Links: 24,276
AlexaRank: 294,189
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - Basic $129/yr pkg
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $129
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $299
Notes about Packages and Membership: 3 packages - number of photos and result ranking as well as multiple city listings are the main differences.

The Site: www.bnbfinder.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008

Review: bedandbreakfast.com

Innkeeper — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:22:37 +0000

You MUST be listed on here. I have mixed reviews of some of the staff and philosophies of this site, but they have the biggest reach by far of all of the bed and breakfast listing sites. Check out your region and city and sign up for the lowest package that puts you near the top (visible when you first load the page). The “Premium” option at 699 is crazy in my opinion, but in some highly competitive markets, you may need to be there to even be seen.

The Good: The site has a “web 2.0 ish” design (although I am not a big fan of the new uuber blue look), the solid reach (places on page 1 of every state search for b&b on Google) and many internal pages have good pagerank.

The Bad: The site uses a lot of flashy elements and advertising from folks other than us innkeepers. The blue text is poor from a readability standpoint. Our personal experiences with the online reservations program and the gift card program have been poor. As the industry leader, they would gain the 5th star by adding a mobile search, reducing the clicks to the inns websites and toning down the non-inn advertising.

Our Inn Results: We advertise on BedandBreakfast.com. We are in a moderately competitive area on their site, there are about a dozen inns listed in our region. In the last 6 months we received 875 click throughs to our website from this one. The visitors viewed an average of 5 pages and spent an average of 4 minutes on our site. Of those there were 23 who followed our preset conversion path and became a reservation. (This does not account for others that may have become a reservation through alternate paths i.e. phone sale, return visit to our site or booking directly via an alternate channel). Overall, BedandBreakfast.com ranked 1st in our paid directory click through and conversions in the last 6 months.

My Ratings:
A 2008 Gold Medal Winner!

Overall Average:	[rating:overall/10]
Site Design:	[rating:8/10]
Site Content:	[rating:9/10]
Site Usability:	[rating:8.5/10]
Site Reach:	[rating:9/10]
Browser:	[rating:7/10]
Clicks to Link:	[rating:7.5/10]
Internal Pagerank:	[rating:8.5/10]
Credibility / QA:	[rating:8/10]
Value:	[rating:8/10]

The Stats:
Age of Domain: 9 years
Main Page Pagerank: 6
Number of Inbound Links: 82,694
AlexaRank: 53,774
Alternate Domain Names: Yes
Direct Links to Your Website: Yes - starting at the $299 per year package.
Least Expensive Membership (annual): $149
Most Expensive Membership (annual): $699
Notes about Packages and Membership: 4 packages to chose from. Main difference is the placement on the search result page as well as details of the inn and photos. Many options for bidding style placement as featured and inn of the month etc.

The Site:www.bedandbreakfast.com
Review Date: January 10, 2008