It was very sweet today to get online and see that Ireland.com has relaunched the site as a local search ‘portal’ for all things Irish. BTW – this is such a money domain (simple, geo, universal)!
In addition, the Irish Times newspaper site has been re-designed, the subscription charges dropped and the newspaper has moved to a dedicated URL – http://www.irishtimes.com/ (the newspaper used to be at the URL Ireland.com).
The Irish Times site has also had a major face lift and is much improved. The site also looks to be driving a strong connection to the major classified channels: Homes, Jobs, Cars and with a special Dating channel as well (this is interesting to have a focus on dating).
A quick review of the Ireland.com site reveals a very clean design and an almost sexy brand – definitely bright and breezy. It is driven by a single search box that handles What/Who/Where. The results pages are very Web 2.0 and include UGC, with an option to create your own account some you can add a review.
There are ‘lifestyle’ channels (you can see these channels icons above) that can also act as navigators (an alternative path to finding content and can also acts as stand alone sub-sites) covering:
- Sport
- Travel
- Going Out
- Staying In (nice one!)
- Style & Beauty
- House & Home
- with 2 others yet to launch (ie – coming soon)…
Here’s an example hotel results page:
I will be back with more on this site, but I wanted to get something out quickly this morning to help get the word out there. Would enjoy getting feedback and commnets from anyone using the site. Thanks.
UPDATE: Greg Sterling has a short post on this site here – I agree that is a “killer” domain and the new Ireland/com really is a shinning example of what and how to develop this kids of local/geo site!
4 responses so far ↓
Irish Times and Ireland.com « Screenwerk // 30 June 2008 at 5:46 pm |
[...] own a killer domain like “Ireland.com.” UK based local search aficionado Dylan Fuller alerted me to the new Ireland.com, which is owned and operated by newspaper The Irish Times. Ireland.com used [...]
Internet Lover // 3 July 2008 at 7:12 am |
The revamp of Ireland.com sounds pretty promising.
Vertical Zoom - Local Search Summit III in Oslo « AdViking // 11 July 2008 at 11:53 am |
[...] Post-Script: LSS member, Irish Times have launched their new search service. It’s work going to have a look as they have done some great things with pushing Search forward. A Fuller View has more on A New Local Search Site in Ireland – ireland.com relaunched [...]
Local Search in Singapore « A Fuller View // 14 August 2008 at 4:12 pm |
[...] (another mainly European newspaper and online media group. Much like other local search initiatives like Ireland.com, Sesam.no, 24.com (in South Africa) and Sensis (in Australia) – Rednano is trying to fuse great [...]