Popular Places in the Nelso Prague iPhone App

1. Old Town Square
2. Prague Astronomical Clock
3. Charles Bridge
4. Prague Castle
5. Franz Kafka's Birthplace
6. Jan Hus Monument
7. The Powder Gate
8. Church of Our Lady before Týn
9. Maisel Synagogue
10. Church of St. Gallus
11. U Fleků
12. Wax Museum Prague
13. Zoo Praha
14. Wallenstein Palace
15. Starbucks Coffee
16. Estates Theater
17. Prague Lookout Tower
18. St. Vitus Cathedral
19. Laterna Magika
20. Hard Rock Cafe Prague
21. Municipal House
22. Sex Machines Museum
23. Old Town Bridge Tower
24. Ariadne Night Club
25. Church of Our Lady of the Snows
26. Captain Nemo
27. Jazz and Blues Lounge Bily Konicek
28. Troja Castle
29. Zizkov Television Tower
30. Monastery of the Infant Jesus of Prague
31. Erotic City
32. Palace Gardens below Prague Castle
33. Prague Public Transport Museum
34. Tuscany Palace
35. Lobkowicz Palace
36. Tesco
37. Pevnost Vyšehrad
38. Goldfingers
39. Toy Museum
40. Loreta
41. Darling Cabaret
42. Sitka Water Tower
43. Vitkov National Monument
44. Botanical Gardens
45. Il Toro Negro
46. K5 Relax Club
47. Kolkovna
48. Allegro
49. DUPLEX

You can download the Nelso Prague iPhone app for free in the App Store.

Top 30 Czech Hotels on Nelso in 2010

Based on page views, these are the most popular Czech businesses in the accommodation category since January 1, 2010.

1. Buddha - Bar - Hotel Prague
2. Hotel AXA
3. Olšanka Hotel
4. Hotel Intercontinental Praha
5. Hotel Barceló Old Town Praha
6. Orea Hotel Pyramida
7. Grand Hotel Pupp
8. Golf Centrum Čechie
9. Guercino
10. Grand Hotel Brno
11. Radisson SAS Alcron Hotel
12. Hotel Restaurant Libuse
13. Dinitz Kosher Hotel Prague
14. Caravan Camping
15. Ski Penzion Kvilda
16. Golfový areál KASKÁDA (Golf Club Brno)
17. Hilton Prague
18. Park Inn Hotel
19. Restaurace & Hotel U medvídků
20. Chata Jizerka
21. The Augustine Hotel
22. ACE - hostel Prague 1
23. Hotel Central
24. Pension Kakrda
25. Chata Pod Bukovcem
26. Plus Prague Hostel
27. Penzion U Slunce
28. Apartment Ski Resort Pec
29. Hotel Kings Court
30. Pinocchio - hotel, discoclub

Progress in Budapest

Photography and data collection in Budapest is going well, and we now have listings in over 150 categories. Within a few weeks, our coverage of Budapest will be better than our coverage of Prague.

Nelso Bratislava iPhone App already #7 in Slovakia

Despite being in the App Store for less than 24 hours, our new iPhone app for Bratislava is already #7 in the Travel category. This isn't much of a surprise - there's not a lot of competition for Bratislava apps currently, and we're the only ones offering a free app.

This is a "beta" release; we still have thousands of business photos to process for Bratislava, and we don't have the app localized into Slovak yet. But we wanted to release it as soon as possible, to judge the demand for an app for a small (Bratislava has a population of about a half million people), less touristy city than Prague.

What might a "sponsored listing" on Nelso be worth?

The only advertising on the Nelso sites currently is Google AdSense. We use AdSense because it is very easy to implement, and doesn't require us to sell advertising directly.

However, in certain markets (e.g. the Czech Republic, Hungary) we feel that it would be far more profitable to sell advertising directly, and the most obvious way to start is with "sponsored listings". A sponsored listing is essentially selling preferred placement to businesses. For example, a business would always appear as the first result for "burgers", even if they were not the closest result based on the search area of the user.

Every major local search site sells sponsored listings, including Yelp, Yahoo! Local, Qype, and the Yellow Pages.

We've decided that we should do the same (sell sponsored listings), which leaves us with two questions to answer:

1. What effect does it have to place a business first in search results?
2. How much should we charge?

As for #1, the easiest was to test this is to choose some business and place them first for searches relevant to their business category. In early January, we did exactly that with the business listing for the Jama Pub in downtown Prague.



As can be seen in the graph, page views for Jama increased 3x from the time we put Jama at the top of search results (early January), while page views for another popular pub in Prague, U Zlatého Tygra remained relatively stable¹.

As for #2 (how much we should charge), I still have no idea what this increase in traffic is worth to a business. What we'll do is set the price very low to start - 20 EUR per month. If you're interested in buying a sponsored listing on Nelso (3 months minimum), send us email at info@nelso.com.

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¹ Don't read too much into the graph above. U Zlatého Tygra still gets far more traffic than Jama. The graph only shows the relative change in traffic over the last few months.

Nelso a winner at Prague Seedcamp

Nelso was one of the winners of the "popular vote" at Prague Seedcamp on March 2, 2010. Other winners were FX Bees, Middlemachine, Preryskop, and Trustyard.

The Seedcamp blog has more coverage of the event.