Archive for February, 2008

I can never stress the importance of renewing or revamping your gite or B&B websites.

Take for instance this recent story of a site for a B&B that went terribly wrong.

In a tiny hamlet in Normandy a French couple had successfully ran a B&B for many years. They had a website whose domain name was the same as the small hamlet they lived in. A year or so ago they sold their property to an English family, who did not take on the website and domain name and allowed it to expire. The new owners moved in, timed passed and the new owners began to make lots of changes to the property.

Throughout this period the website was totally forgotten about by everyone, until very recently that is, when an elderly farmer who lived in the hamlet, had a new computer for Christmas and decided to search for the hamlet on line.

To his horror the name of the hamlet came up on the search engines but not quite as he expected, instead of a website for a B&B, it was an advertisement for porn and gambling. What had happened to the original B&B site that the previous owners of the property had? What were the new English owners planning to do at their new house? After all they were having lots of building work done and were expanding the property considerably.. were they opening up some sort of gaming house or worse in this quiet hamlet?

The elderly neighbour rushed to tell the mayor's office and demanded to know what was going on at the 'maison anglaise', however, the Mayor knew nothing, after all no plans had gone in for any construction work... and the owners of the house who were blissfully unaware in England would have some difficult questions to answer on their return....

The unwanted website had been bought for the value of its residual traffic.

The moral of this story, keep the mayor informed and if you have purchased the domain for the hamlet, perhaps offer it to them.