Videos and Blog Posts for Clean Run Articles

I've recently expanded Googility to include browsing and searching Clean Run articles and issues. Another cool new feature is allowing anyone to add links to blog posts, videos, and web pages about specific Clean Run articles or issues.

If you've ever written about a Clean Run article or whole issue or videotaped an exercise you can now add a link to your web page to that article or issue within Googility. That means people who browse search results will now see those links and can visit your web page(s) to see your thoughts on the subject. Google's search engine will also index those links.

It only takes a couple clicks:

1. Search the periodicals for the article or issue.
2. Click on the article(issue) link.
   
3. Click on the link near the bottom of the page named: "Add a related blog/web page/video to this article(issue)".
4. Fill out the fields in the popup window and click the button.

To stop spammers I review every link and, once approved, your link will appear on the article(issue) page and on a new page of all articles/issues with related content:
http://googility.com/periodicals/links/cleanrun/

I hope you'll take a few minutes to help other agility enthusiasts find your Clean Run related materials.

Please contact me if you have any questions or comments

Clean Run Search Now On Googility!

I was behind in updating my Clean Run magazine search because it was a tedious manual process.
So I spent a couple weeks extending the software running Googility to store and search all Clean Run magazine articles. One of the key improvements was cross referencing issues, articles, authors, and series. So now there is a page for every issue, article, author and series with links to everything I can figure out. I've also added descriptions and tags to all the recent articles to make it easier to find articles on topics of interest.

So now when you visit the main Googility page you'll see a radio button underneath the search box to let you choose to search Googility "places" or search magazine articles. There are currently over 3,200 magazine articles in the search database. Once Google indexes Googility again Clean Run articles will also show up in the general search results!

New Features

Here are the major new features and quick links:

• Article search page
• Browse authors page
• Browse Clean Run by year
• Browse all Clean Run series. e.g. Backyard Dogs, Editorializing
• Browse all article "tags"
• Free reprint articles on the web and free online Clean Run issues

Every link that used to point to my old Clean Run Search should now send you to the new magazine search page. Please let me know if you find one that doesn't. Please let me know if you have other ideas for improving this new search feature.

Dog Agility Search dot com

I've had a couple people mention to me that they either couldn't remember the name or the correct spelling of my dog agility search site Googility. So I've purchased and setup a new website name that might be more memorable: DogAgilitySearch.com. You can use either web site name and you'll be directed to googility.com

I hope that makes it easier to find and use what I think is a pretty useful service. Please let me know in comments or via email if you have other suggestions to make Googility/DogAgilitySearch easier to use or more helpful!

1000+ Places and New Features

This past week the 1000th Place was entered into the Googility database! So far Google doesn't give me any information on the number web pages that totals in the Googility Custom Search Engine, but it has to be around 10,000 dog agility related pages. A big step forward from the few hundred I started out with.

I've also added two new features to the website over the past month

Descriptions for Each Place
For each Place in the Googility database you can now provide up to a 500 word description. This is displayed at the top of the page for each entry. So you can add additional information that lets visitors know more about your Place.

Browse/Search By Label
Each Place can have up to a dozen labels associated with it to help visitors fine tune their search. I've created a new page that lets you browse all the Places with each Label by clicking on the tab with a Label name. The page allows you to sort by the Place Name, City and State. You can also search within a Label selection by clicking on the search icon shown in the diagram below:


I found this new page interesting because it let me easily see how many of each Label is in the database.

Thanks to those of you who added Places to Googility and I hope you enjoy the new features.

Adding Your Agility Business, Web Site or Blog

With the improvements to the Googility website it is now easy for anyone to add or update the information for their favorite agility business, web site or blog to the Googility database.

I've created a short screencast demonstrating how easy it is to do. It also demonstrates some of the new features of the site.

Click on the image below to view the video:



This article describes some of the benefits of adding a business, web site or blog to Googility.

Community Supported Googility

I've just completed a complete rewrite of the Googility.com website. I have changed the philosophy of the web site so that it can better serve the agility community and added a bunch of new features.

For the Community and by the Community

Soon after starting Googility I found that there are so many agility related web sites that it would be a full time job to inspect them all and categorize them correctly. So I wrote this new version of the site to allow anyone to add and update the information in the Googility database. I also provided pages so anyone can browse the information.

Just like Wikipedia, all edits and additions are moderated and changes are not applied to the database until they are approved. This is to prevent mischievous people or spammers from putting inappropriate sites or information in the database.

As information is added and updated in Googility Google automatically updates the search engine, so it is always searching the latest websites and blogs.

So the future of searching for agility information on the web is now in the control of all of us in the agility community.

New Features

For searchers using the site:

• Same great custom search results!
  Search for "A Frame" in Google then search using Googility you'll see the difference.
  
• Browse businesses, websites and blogs in the Googility database
• Search for businesses, websites and blogs by name
  
• Get contact information for businesses (i.e., For Your Canine)
  
• Get driving directions to/from businesses (i.e., For Your Canine)
• More coming soon!
  

For agility blogs, websites and businesses:

• You don't need a website.
  It is increasingly unusual for agility businesses and trainers to not have a website. But even without one, when "search nearby" is implemented your location will be found just like all other businesses!
• A page giving the contact information for your business, website or blog.
  
• Driving directions to your location
• The contact and driving direction page's addresses doesn't change so you can link to them
  
• Your site gets higher rankings in web searches.
  Your site benefits from the permanent links from Googility.com
  

In an effort to answer questions about the new site I've written up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list with a link in the footer of every page.

There is also a Contact Us page in which you can leave any suggestions or comments. I want to know what you think.

What's Next?

The FAQ hints at two next directions: searching near a location and mobile access. These two features can go hand in hand. As more agility businesses add their street addresses a natural thing to do is put them into Google Maps so you can search for a trainer, classes, or ring rental near your home. Once I add mobile support you could do the same while driving cross country right from your cell phone...