Luxembourg related sites only please mister google

Finding what you are looking for on the internet by using google is not always easy in small countries. Luxembourg is a good example. Let’s have a closer look.

>> Scenario: I am a french-speaker who lives in Luxembourg and I want to look at car insurance prices online <<

First Try: I go to google and search for ‘assurance voiture’ (car insurance in french). Only 2 of the first 10 google results are actually linking to sites that are suited for Luxembourg residents. All other results are made for the french market only. If we look closer at these two sites that are relevant for Luxembourg residents, we will see that they are both .lu web sites.

Second Try: I make the same search in google, but this time I add site:.lu to my search criteria – this tells google to only look for sites that have the Luxembourg top level domain .lu. The search therefore looks like this: ‘assurance voiture site:.lu’. Look at the results now – every result relates to Luxembourg and is suitable for Luxembourg residents that are looking for car insurance.

Note that it is not always the case that ‘site:.lu’ will give you better results. You can also have .com .net etc sites that targets Luxembourg. When using site:.lu, all other top level domains are ruled out by google as you ask google to only look for .lu sites. I hope that makes sense to you.

You will find that as your search criteria gets closer to something you can buy online, you will get more non-Luxembourg related results. This is because companies that sell online optimize their websites so that they are better indexed in google. This is also called ‘search engine optimization’ or ‘SEO’. As Luxembourg is such a small market, sites from larger neighboring countries can sometimes dominate the search results you get. So next time you get search results that don’t relate to Luxembourg, try to add site:.lu. You might find what you are looking for quicker.

The ‘Money Settings’ within the new facebook privacy settings are not that easy to get to

As Katie Linendoll pointed out today on CNN, it was a matter of time until facebook was going to start its serious efforts to monetize. That is what their new privacy settings are all about. The more you are willing to share, the more facebook will be able to cash in. As simple as that. – check out my youtube video for detailed explanation on that statement.

As a result, facebook needs to make all the efforts in the world to keep you from changing the default privacy settings. And boy do they. Below is a short video, where I illustrate exactly how facebook protects their ‘money settings’. I refer to the settings that will:

1. Share your entire wall including your posts with all 350 million facebook users
2. Allow friends to pass information about you to applications and websites

[pro-player width='650' height='400' type='video']http://www.online-marketing.lu/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/facebook-privacy-money-settings.mp4[/pro-player]

Pretty clever those facebook guys ey…

There is nothing much to moan about – it is facebook’s platform and they can do as they please. We don’t have to spend our time on there – yet many of choose to (including myself). But going through your privacy settings is definitely recommendable.

Luxemcall – A pretty creative scam

If you are on the luxgsm network in Luxembourg, you might also have received some strange SMS messages every now and then about making cheap international calls. Here is a screen print from my phone to show how the sms looks:

Suspicious as hell – let’s check it out by starting a visit to the website:

OK, I get the picture. Dial a premium number (900 number) in order to save money…that makes sense
Luxemcall sends the sms to your mobile from a Turkish number (+90 042 01 1). That very much looks like the number you need to dial from your Luxembougish telephone ‘900 43 015′. I have to give them points for that. I honestly think that is quite far-fetched and rather creative. Scams really impresses me sometimes.

Just before I finish, let’s look at the internet domain name that this runs on.
It is registered to:
Company: Finarea SA
Name: Dekker Monique
Address: Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1
City: Lugano
Country: SWITZERLAND
Postal Code: 6900
Phone: +41 919335412

Even that telephone number looks suspicious (without knowing it).

I did not spend too much time looking, but there are numerous similar style webpages registered with the same company. This example here shows an iPhone app you download from their website and not from Apples’ iTunes Store (which is the only legit place to get apps for the iPhone):

I just wanted to share this one with you, because I think it is a creative scam.
Either way – if you fall for this scam, I hope you will be smarter next time.

Numericable (Coditel) in Luxembourg – How something so little could change so much

Every now and then, your internet service provider’s service goes down. It sucks, but it happens. Over the past couple of months this has been happening too much to Numericable (formerly known as Coditel) in Luxembourg. Usually, I just sit and wait until it comes back up and use my iPhone to access the internet on my computer. This time the damn thing was down for hours and hours, so I decided to call their support line. After choosing language and service from their phone menu, I finally get a voice (in a different language than I chose) that tells me the waiting time exceeds 10 minutes and that my call will be terminated. So I go to their internet site. The re-branding to ‘Numericale’ is rather recent, so I still refer to them as ‘Coditel’. I go to coditel.lu and see this:

The whole thing is build up to tell me that I live in Brussels, Belgum and that their service is available in my area. No guys…I live in Luxembourg – that is also why I went to .lu and not .be. Furthermore, I thought you re-branded to Numericale, so why am I not re-directed? So, I go to numericable.lu myself, and get this:

Again, the title is setup to target people in Brussels, Belgium. At least the content on the website is designed for the Luxembourg market. Anyhow, I wanted to know if they post anything about their internet service being down on their website, as I could not get to speak to anyone. So I go to the ‘accueil client’ section which means something along the line of ‘customer section’. Nothing either…so I go to the ‘contact us’ section. Then I get this:

Baam – a nice google maps error, because numericable is not able to integrate google maps properly.
As to be expected by now, there was no message on the website about their service being down.

Here is what I don’t understand about Numericable

1. Why don’t they just transfer the visitors from coditel.lu over to numericable.lu?
2. Why don’t they adapt their .lu websites to target the Luxembourg market?
3. If they don’t want to publish that their service is down on the internet, that is kind of understandable…after all their consumer customers are not able to access the internet and then read the message because it is down. But Jesus Christ – then have some voice on your phone system that confirms to the people calling that the internet is down (before they start messing around with their modems and computer settings) – it is not that rare that this is the case anymore.

Conclusion

Numericable is the major player in triple play (tv, phone and internet) in Luxembourg. Something as simple as this, should be a no-brainer. To me this is a complete and utter embarrassment.

The scary thing is that both sites, coditel.lu and numericable.lu, have an analytics tool (google analytics) installed. The reports that this tool generates, is able to perfectly outline the problem to Numericable…if only they would read/understand the reports. What we have here, is a perfect example of the 10/90 rule. The analytics tolls itself is only 10%, while using the tool to your benefit is 90%. I think it is fair to expect a business of this caliber to not make these school-boy errors. Please do your business a favor and check its website for mistakes like this. They are completely unnecessary and really harm the user experience – and thereby also you.

What you should do now

1. Open a new browser window
2. Go to your website by typing in the address manually without ‘www.’
3. Now try typing in the address manually with ‘www.’
4. Are both version doing what they should do?

If yes: Good – well done.
If no: You should get in touch with us and get the problem fixed.

Send us a message if you want your website to benefit from rightly used website analytics

Learn more about website analytics; what exactly it is and how it works

UPDATE 14-Dec-09:
Looks like Numericable Luxembourg fixed the redirection problem as well as the Brussels content targeting issue.

Amazon’s iPhone app picture recognition analysis

I just had the pleasure of trying out Amazon’s new feature in their iPhone app. There is one feature of the app which really impressed me. Not because it is there, but because it works (and it works fast). It’s really simple – you launch the app, you take a picture of a product and amazon will send you back the link to that specific item in their store. Here is how I tested it and what happened:

1. Take a picture of the product in question
2. Submit the picture to amazon
3. Get the reply with product recommendation
4. Check out the product and buy it if you like

For those who forgot they asked amazon to find a product for them, and for those who prefer to buy producs on the computer rather than on their phone, amazon also sends you an email (to the account registered with your amazon account) with a link to the product:

What amazes me is the speed at which amazon’s picture recognition works. It took literally one minute from taking the picture to having the product recommendation. But the tuly amazing thing about this service, is that it actually works and recommends the real product. Remington has several trimmers that look the same. Yet, amazon still managed to pick out the right product for me. I am amazed.

There had to be a downside…and there is. Even though my amazon account is registered to my address in Luxembourg, Europe, I am still taken to the US amazon store. I really don’t see what the big deal is for amazon to guide me to my ‘home store’. By recommending me products from the US store, amazon will not make any sale to me (and other non-US residents) via their iPhone app.

The app is free from the itunes store – click here to get it.