Its been another frustrating few days because of the weather, with several horse racing meetings having to be abandoned as a result of frost, snow and general awful conditions.
Ive often wondered what the horse racing board take into account when they consider rescheduling bigger races, for example at Doncaster recently the Mares Hurdle and the Lightning Novices were saved but the Sky Bet Chase was not. I asked the knowledgable people on the racing forum and received a great link to the following blog by Ruth Quinn, Director of Racing at the Horse Racing Authority. http://www.britishhorseracing.com/goracing/blogs/racing.asp
On to HorseRaceBase news, with the first mini System Builder upgrade done, we are now focusing on the major upgrade, which is moving along very nicely indeed. I reckon it will hopefully go ahead in the next few days, possibly Sunday but ideally before. Once thats done there are a whole host of further upgrades to start processing for the site.
Ive decided to use this blog as a way of listing the improvements as they go on. So when we do anything in any way significant ill list it on here.
Ideally i want to be writing the blog every day or at least every couple, with more insight into racing each day, the tools i use personally and discussion on the talking points at the time. But its important to concentrate fully for now on the pending issues with the site.
One very important feature to be added soon, will be the Speed element. Its something we are commonly questioned about, in terms of when it will be ready. To combat previous issues we had, we will now have standard times, adjusted times and a HRB speed rating, created by comparing times to standard and performing a calculation based on several different factors. People can then use whatever they want, if they are interested in Speed.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Racing vs SEO websites
Since we started HorseRaceBase it has grown considerably in terms of features offered, this is because our focus has always been on responding to user requests, adding new features and improving on the existing horse racing tools.
One area i have to admit i have not focused enough on is the SEO (search engine optimization), but in the past few months, we have been trying much harder. Its a strange and sobering realisation when you stick 'horse racing systems' as an example into google and cant find your own website. Obviously this isnt good enough and we must do all we can to improve.
There are two sides to this of course, the first is that patience is a strong virtue of mine and im thankful thats the case, because there is nothing that can be done overnight. In fact it takes many months for any SEO activities to start to take effect. One great disappointment ive had is with the hiring of an expert. Im still in negotiations to do so but most seem to just waffle on about the same old things promising first page rankings etc!
This is very similar to horse racing websites in some ways. It seems the norm is to simply keep on promising endless winners and flash giant profit figures across the screen.
It seems for every one of these racing sites promising yachts and mansions, there is an SEO company promising they can make you number one on google for any phrase of your choosing.
Clearly the similarity of the two is this - just as the phoney racing site may well give you a few days profit, the dodgy SEO crowd will possibly get you ranked top for a few days thanks to whatever tactics they adopt. But after a very short space of time reality will hit in and as the bookies get the better of you on one side of the fence, Google & Yahoo will be adjusting their algorithms to sort out the dodgy methods on the other.
So in one losing scenario your broke, in the other your website is banished from the search engines. Both are fair outcomes in my opinion for the lazy 'seek the quick buck ' attitude.
Our own approach to horse racing has always been to be completely honest - ie - its not easy and you will have to put your own work in, but our tools will certainly be a huge benefit. Im looking for an SEO company who are doing the same!
One area i have to admit i have not focused enough on is the SEO (search engine optimization), but in the past few months, we have been trying much harder. Its a strange and sobering realisation when you stick 'horse racing systems' as an example into google and cant find your own website. Obviously this isnt good enough and we must do all we can to improve.
There are two sides to this of course, the first is that patience is a strong virtue of mine and im thankful thats the case, because there is nothing that can be done overnight. In fact it takes many months for any SEO activities to start to take effect. One great disappointment ive had is with the hiring of an expert. Im still in negotiations to do so but most seem to just waffle on about the same old things promising first page rankings etc!
This is very similar to horse racing websites in some ways. It seems the norm is to simply keep on promising endless winners and flash giant profit figures across the screen.
It seems for every one of these racing sites promising yachts and mansions, there is an SEO company promising they can make you number one on google for any phrase of your choosing.
Clearly the similarity of the two is this - just as the phoney racing site may well give you a few days profit, the dodgy SEO crowd will possibly get you ranked top for a few days thanks to whatever tactics they adopt. But after a very short space of time reality will hit in and as the bookies get the better of you on one side of the fence, Google & Yahoo will be adjusting their algorithms to sort out the dodgy methods on the other.
So in one losing scenario your broke, in the other your website is banished from the search engines. Both are fair outcomes in my opinion for the lazy 'seek the quick buck ' attitude.
Our own approach to horse racing has always been to be completely honest - ie - its not easy and you will have to put your own work in, but our tools will certainly be a huge benefit. Im looking for an SEO company who are doing the same!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Information overload!
For the past couple of weeks we have been working round the clock on getting some new information ready for the system builder. It will hopefully be passed across after horse racing has finished this evening.
Its been pretty hectic and at times it feels like the endless spreadsheet and database checking etc is starting to take over. When i close my eyes at night i see lines of data! Nonetheless it will be worth it and will give some more horse racing categories to breakdown (requested by users).
Still ongoing are the Speed and Stall data projects. Both of these will be rolled out soon.
The stalls in particular are really frustrating - just when you think you are getting there, something new crops up and as its all about accuracy, you often find its two steps forward and eight steps back!
For example at many of the tracks sometimes stalls are placed in the centre for 5 furlong races, other times they are attached to the rail - whats irritating is that when your backdating and gathering this data, often it feels like it was just whatever suited at the time!
It will be great once ready though as all the horse track stall analysis i have came across is incorrectly collated, using a numerical sort and then showing results. This is of no use at all if on some days the stalls went from high numbers on the inside and then at other times low numbers!
Like all the projects we undertake its getting the older data and verifying it thats the main issue, keeping it up to date is far easier (thankfully!).
An example of this was the stallion data. It took us ages but now we just update for each time a new horse runs and its working out really well with some great information easily at hand to perform statistical breakdowns on.
Thats all for now - back to spreadsheet lands for me now!
Its been pretty hectic and at times it feels like the endless spreadsheet and database checking etc is starting to take over. When i close my eyes at night i see lines of data! Nonetheless it will be worth it and will give some more horse racing categories to breakdown (requested by users).
Still ongoing are the Speed and Stall data projects. Both of these will be rolled out soon.
The stalls in particular are really frustrating - just when you think you are getting there, something new crops up and as its all about accuracy, you often find its two steps forward and eight steps back!
For example at many of the tracks sometimes stalls are placed in the centre for 5 furlong races, other times they are attached to the rail - whats irritating is that when your backdating and gathering this data, often it feels like it was just whatever suited at the time!
It will be great once ready though as all the horse track stall analysis i have came across is incorrectly collated, using a numerical sort and then showing results. This is of no use at all if on some days the stalls went from high numbers on the inside and then at other times low numbers!
Like all the projects we undertake its getting the older data and verifying it thats the main issue, keeping it up to date is far easier (thankfully!).
An example of this was the stallion data. It took us ages but now we just update for each time a new horse runs and its working out really well with some great information easily at hand to perform statistical breakdowns on.
Thats all for now - back to spreadsheet lands for me now!
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