A suggestion that has been made to us here at Pedigree dogs a few times since we started is why not only allow dogs to be advertised that have had all the breed specific health tests done.
It’s a valid point, and in time something that we would love to be able to implement.
After working on the site for the last 3 years, I’ve learned quite a bit about web sites and how difficult it is to drive traffic to them. Things that Google take into consideration when returning their results when somebody searches is how popular a particular site is, how many people visit it each day, how long do they spend on the site, and do they only look at the first page they land on and then bounce off to another site, or do they stay and check out your site, checking out more than 1 page, and clocking up valuable time on your site, which Google then interpret as a good match to the person’s search term, etc, etc.
So let’s take a look at the very popular web sites in Ireland that carry a dog section. They allow virtually any kind of dog to be advertised, although some will not allow stud dogs or Staffordshire Bull Terriers.They are used by the complete spectrum of dog owners or dog breeders in Ireland, from the person that considers themselves to be at the very top of their chosen dog breed in Ireland, that carries out the breed specific health tests, to the back yard breeder that thinks that crossing a Poodle with any other breed of dog is not only desirable, but also what people are looking for, and an easy way to generate some cash. It’s easy to place an ad on them, and as long as you don’t show a dog that is living in horrendous conditions, and don’t break any of the sites dog policy rules, then up your ad goes.
Now that’s how us humans see these popular web sites, and based on how we see them, choose to use them or not.
Let’s take a look at how Google sees them.
They contain every type of dog breed you can think of including all the recent designer breeds, that an awful lot of people are searching for these days. People that go to these sites tend to spend a lot of time looking around, whether they are genuinely interested in looking for a pedigree dog, a pedigree dog with no registration papers, a cross bred dog that was a result of an accidental mating, a designer dog breed or a rescue dog, or if they are trawling through the site reporting dodgy ads to the site owners. So Google see them as a site that has virtually every breed of dog for sale as well as the huge amount of combinations that results in crossing these dog breeds, that when people land on it, spend vast amounts of time on it flicking form page to page or ad to ad….Therefore it must be a great match for that persons search term, and the out of control train gathers speed.
Let’s take a look at our own dog breeds, and the group of people we know of that have the same breed. There are only a few in each breed of dog that do things they way you do things, which is in your way of thinking is the correct way, and the way that any responsible person in your breed that is thinking of breeding their dog, should do it. We’ve written about that before here at pedigree dogs, on the blog one dogs meat is another dogs poison
That’s not so say that a site that we are working towards would not appeal to users & therefore Google, but dog sites like Champdogs in the UK set up over 13 years ago when there was far less competition around, and achieved a critical mass of visitors over the years that keeps them up front and centre when people search for dog related material on the internet. I’m sure it would be a very different story if that site launched today.
So I’d like to ask you to please stick with us, and continue to support us, as you know we are only a small team here at Pedigree Dogs, but we are singing off the same hymn sheet as most of you, and as I’ve said before, we’re in this for the long haul.
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