- Listening to interview with David Lerdell about reputation management on the Internet (swedish) http://snurl.com/3mufc #
- Five good tips from Guy Kawasaki on VC funding http://snurl.com/3mumg #
- Creating an email marketing campaign using Responsys. Good tool. #
- Added cool new feature on MyBiz.se to allow visitors to correct company locations on Google maps http://tinyurl.com/57mzrv #
- MyBiz.se paid customers now get a smarter looking single column layout http://mybiz.se/D13194.html #
- Researching Web 2.0 Politics - Sunshine Review is aiming to increase transparency wiki style - http://snurl.com/3inon #
- …Web 2.0 Politics - You2Gov.com - building grassroots communities - groups, videos, forums etc - http://you2gov.com #
- Interesting article about small business experience of using online video for marketing http://snurl.com/3iror #
- @NiallHarbison From an SEO perspective, changing the domain name is not a big problem if it’s done right - I did it for MyBiz.se recently #
- @NiallHarbison Couldn’t DM you as you’re not following me, email is myfirstname@robertgowans.com #
- Watching some interesting videos from successful entrepreneurs http://snurl.com/3igv5 whilst polishing some new features on http://mybiz.se #
- Installed Google Analytics for WordPress http://snurl.com/3hz4z on http://robertgowans.com #
- Listening to Bob Harris - great for new music http://snurl.com/3c7ov #
- New style category listings are live - http://mybiz.se/C77 - sweet! #
- @NiallHarbison That’s an impressive set of stats! I guess the trick now will be to fully capitalize on the publicity and keep up momentum #
- Making the final touches to the front page slideshow and company signup page at http://mybiz.se #
- Working on a new layout for directory listings at http://mybiz.se #
- Just cleared up the css vs table debate I was having with myself for directory listings -tables it is! (this helped: http://snurl.com/3hq37 #
I watched Dragon’s Den last night (series 6 episode 5) and was delighted to see iFoods.tv delivering a strong pitch for their Internet recipe website which offers both professional and member contributed cooking videos. Niall Harbison (chef) and Sean Fee (business partner) were asking for a £100,000 investment from the Dragon’s in return for a 10% stake in the company.
Niall and Sean seemed to be impressing the Dragons with 15,000 unique visitors a month to iFoods.tv and projected advertising income from year 2 at £480,000 and year 3 at £1,800,000. However, the bombshell was dropped when the guys confessed that there was a similar website called iFood.tv - ouch!
The closely named competitor quickly put the Dragons off and no investment was made - the plucky guys from Ireland only received advice from the Dragons to change the name from iFoods.tv to something else.
But was this a good call from the Dragons, given the early attractiveness of the business? That’s a question that intrigued me a little, so I conducted a quick online competitive comparison of iFoods.tv and iFood.tv to see which was currently the stronger Internet business.
Round 1: Search Engine Saturation
This is a check to see how many pages a website has indexed by Google. The more pages indexed by Google, the greater the chance that one of those pages will match whatever someone is searching for, the more visitors a website should get from Google.
The results: As of now, iFoods.tv has 24,000 pages, whilst iFood.tv has about 180,000 pages. That makes iFood.tv the clear winner with by far more pages indexed by Google (and probably the most content and video). You can check this yourself by typing “site:iFoods.tv” and “site:iFood.tv” in Google.
So far, good call Dragons!
Round 2: Inbound Links
Roughly speaking, the more inbound links a website has from other websites, the more popular it is. Google and other search engines use this popularity as a factor when deciding which results to show first. Of course, the quality of inbound links that a website has is just as important if not more so, but the sheer volume of links typically gives a good enough indication of a websites popularity.
A good way to check this is using AllTheWeb.com. Make sure you do an advanced search and exclude results from the website you are checking (thanks to Derek Edmond for showing me this trick a while back).
The results: iFoods.tv shows 200 inbound links whilst iFood.tv shows 2020 inbound links - so that’s another clear win for iFood.tv.
The Dragons are proved a canny lot again.
Round 3: Traffic ranking according to Alexa
A quick way to compare the popularity of websites is at Alexa.com. Although not always 100% reliable (especially for smaller websites), Alexa often gives a good indication of website popularity in terms of traffic ranking, reach and page views.
The results: the Alexa results clearing show iFood.tv has a higher reach and rank compared to iFoods.tv, although iFoods.tv does seem to have overtaken iFood.tv in terms of page views over the last month or so.
With a glimmer of hope for iFoods.tv, we’ll call this round a draw.
Round 4: Google results for a domain search
This shows the number of searches for the domain name (including the .tv extension) over the last six and three months - which can give a good indication of brand recognition over time (I learnt this handy test from SEOmoz last year).
The results:
Whilst iFoods.tv clearly has the best six month figures, it really worries me that the number of people searching for their domain name has massively tailed off in the last 3 months. I hope this is an anomaly of some sort, but I can’t help thinking that their website growth has slowed down significantly.
I’ll have to give this one to iFood.tv - sorry iFoods.tv.
Summing up
All in all, my opinion is that the Dragons were right. Whilst the guys at iFoods.tv have a great concept which has been well executed by the looks of their website - the domain name was a bad choice. They seem to have registered iFoods.tv in March 2007, whereas iFood.tv was registered in May 2006 - so they either didn’t do their homework, took a risk, or were unlucky (the first pages of iFood.tv may have been created on or before Apr 2007).
Whatever the history, iFoods.tv has a very strong competitor in iFood.tv, a competitor that seems to be winning on a number of key comparisons.
So, like the Dragons - I’m out, and change the name of the website guys.
Robert
P.S: If any Dragons would like to invest £100,000 for a 10% stake in an exciting Internet business (Yell meets MySpace helping companies of all sizes connect with their customers) with 30,000 visitors a month and projected income of £695,000 in two years (in just the Swedish market of 9 million people)…
…we’re just getting started and looking to expand internationally, so don’t hesitate to give me a call. 
- Validating 50 new reviews on http://mybiz.se
and listening to Iggy Pop Live Supreme # - Working on the http://MyBiz.se signup page - trying to balance free vs paid features #
- Writing a diabetes action guide for my son’s nursery where he starts on Wednesday #
- Reading The Wisdom of Crowds - research for http://veripol.org #
