NOTE: This is still a review in progress, so check back later for more.
Latest Rewrite/Updates: Dec. 8th, 2008 -- 11:00 AM ET
Yikes.
Where to begin?
Anyway, if this is your first visit to About.com, before venturing off to check it out, tell your secretary to hold all your calls.
And cancel your appointments for the rest of the day.
(or two)
Grab a cup of coffee, a pitcher of beer, a bottle of scotch, or whatever else you prefer to enhance your web-surfing with.
Turn off your cell phone.
Find a nice comfy chair (or cot).
Put your feet up.
Lay back.
Position your keyboard, mouse, and monitor for maximum comfort.
Take a deep breath and...
Let the keyword-fest begin!
And yes, there are many MustReadBloggers on the site.*
You'll find them eventually.
Enjoy.
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Report back in a couple days and leave some comments about your About.com explorations.
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* Depending on your interests (and tastes), there's anywhere between 1 and 750 MustReadBloggers on the site.
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NOTE: As you poke around inside the About.com universe, take note of what happens to the "www" subdomain name. They've organized their site to make it very convenient for you to scan the search result lists for relevant main categories, hence better targeting your inquiry (and/or expanding how you think about it).
For instance, let's say you do a search on the keyword "chocolate".
Like any other search engine, you'll get a list of the usual article headlines you'd expect:
- Chocolate Brownie Recipes
- History of Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Health Benefits of Chocolate
- Pairing Wine & Chocolate
- Chocolate Pecan Pie
Normally, (with Google or Yahoo for instance) you'll see website listing results showing the "www" subdomain links like so:
However, the great thing about About.com is that they've created a highly categorized subdomain grouping of proprietary information (both original and/or compiled), therefore you're able to easily visually scan the main categories for the article results in single-word form, left-aligned (and yet found by searching on "chocolate"):
Neato, huh?
Note that the first group above listing five results all point to the same pages as the second group, respectively.
Who would have thought that a category dedicated to horse racing would have anything to do with Chocolate Pecan Pie?
Kentuckians, I suppose.
By organizing their greatly varied content into numerous subdomains, they've made it possible to make wonderfully creative uses of their prefix category names in their search engine result listings.
So, because you can so quickly scan such a wide-range of single words associated with "chocolate", you're exposing yourself to a far more _richer_ variety of chocolate possibilities!
(pun intended)
And just in case the way I described the advantages of that feature made your eyes gloss over with puzzlement, allow me to try again:
In a search result list for "chocolate", if you only visually scanned the headlines, the title "Chocolate Brownie Recipes" wouldn't reflect the main category "Southern Food" in any way at all.
If you still don't get it, try it yourself. Scan various keyword search result lists and skim the subdomain names first. Then the headlines.
By actually doing it, you'll get a way better idea of how great it is to review the subdomain categories.
"Tell me and I forget,
teach me and I remember,
involve me and I learn."
-- Some Cool American Dude
In case you're still dozed off, here's a keyword to try for which you'll see (a bit more clearly) the value of scanning the subdomain categories list before wasting your time reading and clicking on the much lengthier subject titles:
SexSpeaking of Paris, if you're wondering who I quoted above? He used to make big land deals, dabble in democracy, write books (and whatnot), and fly kites.
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(Still In Progress)
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Latest Update: Dec. 8th, 2008
