Optimizing your Blog or Winery Website: WBC 2009 Presentation

Thanks to the many of you who attended my talk on search engine optimization at the 2009 Wine Bloggers’ Conference, in Sonoma. As promised, here are the slides from that talk.

For those of you who weren’t there, I presented my view of search engine optimization (SEO), which I prefer to call “Search-Friendliness.” I talk about how users find information on the internet, what the “long tail” means, and why you must understand it in order to connect with your potential audience, backing up my points with statistics from Able Grape users. I give a crash course on how search engines work, and what implications this has for how you design and build your site. Finally, I talk a bit about analytics.

I haven’t added audio yet, and there were a lot of points that I made or amplified verbally, so hopefully the slides make sense by themselves, but I wanted to post them earlier rather than later.

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day! A big thanks to Able Grape’s significant community of Canadian users, who have been dedicated supporters of our project. We really appreciate it.

For fun, a few links to Canadian wine resources, and related viticultural topics, on Able Grape. They’ll open in a separate window – please try them! As always, we welcome feedback. Is there something missing? Can we make these results better? Have suggestions for other examples we could include? Drop us a note.

(And yes, that is maple syrup in the wine bottle pictured at left. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.)

Able Grape Is Not Google

Pardon the silly title, but with all the buzz on Bing (“Bing Is Not Google”) I just couldn’t help myself. And please, no silly questions about whether or not I’m going to change Able Grape’s name to “Aging…”

It’s been unbelievably busy here at Able Grape central, and I’ve been quite remiss on my blogging. Hoping to get back to a more regular pace soon! In the mean time, here’s a quick update on recent changes.

This morning, I put live Able Grape’s largest — and, hopefully, best — database ever, clocking in at nearly 20 million pages of wine information from just shy of 41,000 websites. Lots and lots of new sites, and lots of improvements across the board.

Here’s a smattering of examples. Try them — they’ll open in a separate window — and compare to Google (or to Bing, for that matter) – I hope you’ll be pleased.

Come see us at Wine 2.0 this Thursday

Able Grape is excited to be demoing our search engine for trustworthy, in-depth wine information this Thursday at Wine 2.0 in San Francisco, hosted by the fine folks at Crushpad.

Want to learn more about Able Grape? Want to learn secret tips and tricks for finding great, in-depth online wine information? Have feedback or suggestions about how we can make this an even better tool for your needs? Or even if you’d just like to hang out with a bunch of wine geeks and taste lots of wine, please stop by and say hi!

Mention the secret code nebbiolo at our demo table, and we may have a special surprise for you, if it hasn’t already run out…

WBW #54: ‘na passione per Piemonte

(yes, yes, this is a couple of days late, mea culpa… more like a “Venerdì del Vino” as I write this, or a “Sauce-Blogging Saturday” as I finally post it…)

The idea of a Wine Blogging Wednesday on Piemontese wines (see original theme posting) was at once compelling and daunting: compelling, because I dearly love Piemonte; daunting, because there are so many wonderful Piemontese producers, varieties, and regions, choosing just one, or even a handful of wines to even vaguely represent the region’s diversity is a great challenge. In the end, I settled on three off-the-beaten-path wines from small producers in three different areas.

1997 Cantina Terlano Pinot Bianco ‘Vorberg’

Sometimes one tastes wines that seem to redefine what a particular grape from a particular place can do. Such was the wine I tasted tonight, the 1997 Pinot Bianco ‘Vorberg’ from Cantina Terlano. I bought a few bottles of this a number of years ago, and I’ve tried a bottle every year or two. Each time I opened a bottle, the wine was closed, but I could tell there was something special there; it was like having someone almost smack me in the face with a gold brick, but stop short. I could feel the rush of air that somehow implied the weight of the brick, but I knew I had to wait.

Tonight that waiting paid off. I grilled a beautiful piece of swordfish, put it on a bed of rapini with garlic and chile, and pulled out one of the last bottles of the Vorberg. When I opened it and decanted it, the first whiff told me its time had come: pronounced, mature, yet still vibrant aromas of wet wool, lime, grapefruit, pear, honey, and a hint of diesel. On the palate, the wine was dry, minerally, full-bodied, almost unctuous, with a creaminess that bespoke malolactic fermentation, yet still with fairly high acidity and excellent focus. The wine has a long, wonderfully complex finish, and keeps evolving in the glass — so much so that I’m sitting here two hours later not wanting to finish the bottle so I can keep enjoying it.

The producer, one of Italy’s top cantine sociali (or see cooperatives), obtains the fruit from member vineyards at 500-900 meters above sea level, with sandy, porphyrous soil. After temperature-controlled fermentation in large oak vats, the wine stays on its lees for one year, which explains the wine’s evident honeyed note. The winery itself suggests the Vorberg will last 8-10 years; usually I take these things with a grain of salt, but in this case they’re spot on.

The moral of the story? Some wines are worth the wait, and they’re not always the one’s you’d think. This not particularly expensive white has stood the test of more than a decade in bottle, and it just keeps getting better. Signing off now to go enjoy the last glass.

More references:

• Pinot Blanc
• Alto Adige
• Cantina Terlano

Calling all of you in the wine trade!

I’d like to help you, your colleagues and your customers find more trustworthy, in-depth wine information on the Internet. And I could use your help getting the word out about Able Grape:

•  If you’d like a stack of Able Grape postcards (see image at left) for display in your store or restaurant, or to give to your trade clientele, please drop me an email with your address, and I’ll gladly send some to you.

•  If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, get in touch and I’d be happy to come out and demo Able Grape for you and your colleagues, and show you some tips and tricks for finding great, in-depth wine information (some of which is very difficult or impossible to find via Google!). I’d also appreciate the chance to talk with you and learn how I can make Able Grape an even better tool for our community. Have thoughts or suggestions about what you need when looking for wine information? Get in touch, I’d love to come out and meet you. (If you’re not in the Bay Area, get in touch anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and who knows when I may be in your neighborhood…)

Able Grape Turns One!

This is a short post for a momentous occasion, but I’ve been so busy working on the new version of Able Grape that I almost forgot: on January 28th, Able Grape turned one year old! (That’s not counting the three year gestation period prior to launch, of course…) I wanted to thank all of you for your incredible support during the past year. It’s been quite an adventure.

On a separate note, some of you may have noticed that I’ve been quiet for the last few weeks, and database refreshes have been delayed a bit. This is because I’m hard at work on new infrastructure to handle the incredible growth Able Grape has been seeing. Early tests have been going well, and I hope to crank up the new system to full scale as soon as I finish testing. The new database should come in at about 17 million documents, with 40,000 sites worth of trustworthy wine information. Thanks for your patience, the new database is going to rock! And when it’s up and running, it’ll be time for a proper birthday party. Looking forward to bringing lots of great things your way in this, Able Grape’s second year!

(P.S. that photo isn’t just a stock image, it’s a mille crêpe cake a friend and i baked recently for another friend’s birthday; 20 layers of crêpes (well, almost; we ran out of batter) with pastry cream in between, and a brûlée top. A “mattone,” as the Italians would say, but oh, so good. And so much fun with a kitchen flamethrower making it)

Spiffy new language features!

Hi, folks, just put live a new release with some significant improvements in how Able Grape handles languages. Here’s what’s new:

• Language detection (the accuracy of those little flags on the results) is vastly improved.
• You can now change your preferred language from any page. Just use the pull-down menu at the far upper right.
• Results are now slightly biased towards your preferred language. First, set your preferred language in the user preferences or change it using the pull-down menu. Now Able Grape will still show you the most relevant results in any language, but in the case where two similar results are available, and one is in your language, Able Grape will prefer the one in your language. You can see this, for example, in the results for Taurasi in Italian, and the results for Taurasi in English, or between Côte Rôtie in English and Côte Rôtie in French.
• The Yahoo and Google search facilities (to the right of the search box, try them!) will now use your preferred language. In other words, if you’re using Able Grape in French, the Yahoo and Google links will search in French as well.
• Last, and most exciting: Able Grape’s Spanish version, courtesy of the fantastic translation services of Carolina Ramos, is up and running. There are a couple of small glitches we’re still working out (my fault, not Carolina’s!) but it should in general work very well.

Able Grape beta 3, coming soon, will have additional sophisticated language features, by popular request. In the mean time, as always, don’t hesitate to let me know should you have comments or suggestions!

Merry Christmas / Joyeux Noël / Buon Natale!

Just a quick note to all the people who have stopped by to visit Able Grape in this, our first year. I hope we’ve been able to help you find lots of useful, in-depth wine information. Thanks for using Able Grape, thanks for helping us get the word out, and thanks for all the great suggestions and ideas. Please keep them coming!

It’s been a fantastic year meeting all of you — even if virtually — through our shared love of wine.

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas, and I look forward to serving you even better in 2009.

Doug Cook