Friday, January 2, 2009

Top categories on Nelso.cz for December 2008

The top categories for user searches on Nelso.cz for the month of December 2008 were:
  1. Plavecké bazény (swimming pools)
    This was a popular search during the summer, but not sure why it'd be so popular in December. Perhaps people are already sick of winter and want to go swimming rather than do a winter sport.
  2. Pošty (post offices)
    Always a popular search. For some reason, on Seznam.cz we rank above the actual Czech post office when searching for post offices in Prague. The Czech Post might want to do a little SEO, at least to rank for their own name.
  3. Kostely (churches)
    This is a new one. I don't think we've ever had so much traffic for this category before. The days in December with the most searches for "church" on Nelso.cz? December 25th and December 31st, of course.
  4. Zubní lékaři (dentists)
    No surprises here. Everyone has to go to the dentist.
  5. Mexické restaurace (Mexican restaurants)
    I don't normally think of Czechs as big fans of Mexican food, but this may just be the effect of our SEO efforts in this area.
  6. Papírnictví (paper and stationery stores)
  7. Sushi
  8. Indické restaurace (Indian restaurants)
    Wow, the Czechs are getting adventurous. Mexican food, Sushi, and Indian food all in the top 10? What happened to the beloved Czech "knedlíky" (dumplings)?
  9. Tetovací Studia & Body Piercing (tattoos and body piercing)
    I'm now used to the idea of tattoos being a top 10 category, but when I started Nelso a year ago I would never have guessed this category would be so popular.
  10. Čínské restaurace (Chinese restaurants)
    Again, so surprises here. Prague is full of Chinese restaurants, and the Czechs love Chinese food.
What's interesting about this list is that it is not in line with the popular perception of Nelso as a restaurant and bar guide. The top four categories are all unrelated to food and drink, and only four of the top 10 are related to restaurants (none of the top ten are related to drinking alcohol - you have to go down to our #16 category, hospody (pubs) to find that). Many local sites concentrate too heavily on restaurants and entertainment, when there is a lot of traffic out there for more "mundane" categories like dentists and office supplies.