BOTW Local Goes Beta
June 18th, 2008
Written By: Adam Sussman
I’m thrilled to officially announce the beta release of a project that has more or less consumed all of my energy this past year and a half, BOTW Local.
Now weighing in at 16.5 million pages, this site has been by far the most intricate and most complicated project I have ever worked on. Our team is continuously finding areas on the site we want to improve, and by all appearances, this project will continue to evolve. Although we’ve only just launched Beta, we have our eyes set on developing many-many more cool features.
Launching such a large site is no small feat. Because there are thousands of working parts, we’ve been careful with its release. Over the past few weeks we have slowly opened up a handful of major markets Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Chicago and Austin. We’ve been monitoring user experience, bot crawling and indexing in efforts to allow us to debug unexpected errors and seamlessly complete our coverage of the entire United States.
If you’re a business owner then we invite you to claim your business for Free with JumpStart. And if you’re responsible for managing the marketing for a business that has multiple locations, feel free to contact us directly so we can help get you setup!
Of course all feedback is welcomed!
June 20th, 2008 16:52
I think the idea behind BOTW local is “think global act local”. And with the new mobile hype a great local directory could be worth a lot - but not now. Perhaps somewhere in future..
June 24th, 2008 08:15
16.5 million pages of junk. I hope none of it gets indexed.
June 24th, 2008 09:00
Hey Adam,
I checkout of some of the features of the site. It looks pretty awesome. I don’t know if I could spend a year and a half working on this thing without any return. You have more patience than I do. I hope Ellis’ comment about it being the wrong time for a local directly like yours isn’t accurate but I can see the point.
You can make up for the with good marketing!
The design is very cleanse I like it a lot.
June 24th, 2008 10:16
Andy, thank you for that comment.
June 27th, 2008 14:12
If only BOTW didn’t cost so much to become a member! Great functionality though, very clean looking.
June 29th, 2008 18:40
Nice looking site and looks like a great idea. I don’t think I could work on a site for over a year before I got it to market.
July 11th, 2008 15:50
If only BOTW didn’t cost so much to become a member! Great functionality though, very clean looking.
July 18th, 2008 07:22
16.5 million pages!!! :0
I really hope none of it gets indexed. What ammount it is!
August 1st, 2008 05:10
if in malaysia they can cover all the places, then this site will be cool but this is restricted to the usa location only rite?
btw, this is my first time in here. i would love to bookmark this site..look nice !! keep it up !!
xBrain
August 1st, 2008 08:31
I wish someone would undertake a similar project here in India but it is just not the same here. People still do not feel confortable buying things online. So with e-commerce at the low something so wonderful as the concept you have will not be appreciated at all.
August 3rd, 2008 12:22
I have always been interested in this site BOTW didnt know how big this site was Wow
August 4th, 2008 08:04
nice info .. thx .. and the design is really good as all said .. simple sites are liked by people and search engines for sure ..
August 8th, 2008 05:07
Do you plan extend service to World Wide? May be special mobile version?
August 9th, 2008 11:48
wow,…great job for you
August 10th, 2008 20:24
Well, if possible, we can have the asia region in the botw. Btw, mostly in asia region, most of the sites are blogs instead of business sites.
August 11th, 2008 12:21
Wow that seems like a huge job, bet you have a great team behind you!
August 12th, 2008 13:38
Very ambitious project… looks great so far… good luck with this!
August 12th, 2008 20:40
Looks nice, I have tried it works great.
August 13th, 2008 05:29
16.5 million pages..Hmm..
Thanks.. Great job.
August 13th, 2008 23:01
this is a great news
but 16.5 million pages woot
August 14th, 2008 11:27
i really like the design , looking like nice service.
August 14th, 2008 13:56
Wow, very impressive. Wish you all the best with your website!
August 15th, 2008 05:42
i love this service, it’s shout for all, google, Weather, new movies.
thanx you!
August 15th, 2008 11:39
I assure you its slightly a bit more complicated then pulling a feed from Google. Granted we are using the Google Maps API for our maps.
A bit of credit, please! You make it seem we spent two years messing around with a Google out of box solution. Only if this was that simple.
August 17th, 2008 02:28
good luck to you..
i’ll pray for your success
August 19th, 2008 10:51
16.5 pages wow! monster! )
August 20th, 2008 12:02
Very nice project and simple. wow. good work.
August 20th, 2008 12:10
Very nice project.
August 21st, 2008 16:34
Can’t wait for the first non-beta release. the design is great. Did not test the features, so i cannot comment on that.
Keep us informed.
August 22nd, 2008 05:40
i love the design, it’s very clean, great!
August 22nd, 2008 15:49
Congratulations on your launch. I am very interested in developing a very large website that focuses on real estate, offering many unique features that hopefully will provide value to anyone buying or selling their home or condo. It is a daunting project and will take us at least a year or more, as well. Our main focus will be to provide value for users that will translate ultimately into increased business. Good luck with your excellent project.
August 23rd, 2008 01:55
Oh! 16.5 million pages,
Google index only 675,000 pages
August 23rd, 2008 07:51
Congratulations!!!This is a great work. But the text on the right block of the Jumpstart page is too small. Can you enlarge it a little bit?
August 26th, 2008 01:24
like as google earth
August 26th, 2008 08:45
Great site and a fantastic service. Testing a site of this magnitude presents some significant challenges. I’d love to hear more about how you carried out the work. Good job.
August 27th, 2008 19:22
Congrats for your success, well I was just wondering if the bandwidth of your server will be able to handle the initial release of your project?
August 28th, 2008 02:59
Great and it looks so cooool, and the cost is ^^^?
August 30th, 2008 09:14
I agree with you all. Clean design will be more interesting to enjoy it, keep working.
August 31st, 2008 07:04
I can imagine - my website only has a hundred or so pages and I struggle with that at time! Congratulations though hope the project goes well!
August 31st, 2008 10:12
Is the boy with your shoulder in the page your son or what. The page you create gives a very pleasant look and it looks natural. I think this is the key to your success. Do you agree with me?
September 1st, 2008 18:21
That is one cool interface. I am not in any of the covered areas at the moment, but it is a very well designed UI. Great work
September 2nd, 2008 07:00
BOTW seems to be having a healthy good traffic rank. How’s it picking and what’s your business model in terms of monetization?
PS: Btw have you completely stopped posting here?
Cheers,
Ajith
September 3rd, 2008 19:53
The design is very nice.. I love it..
September 3rd, 2008 22:50
I always liked botw, waiting for the day google dumps dmoz and picks up botw instead.
September 4th, 2008 06:59
The site design and layout is pretty simple and neat, I will give a 9/10 for it!
September 22nd, 2008 18:23
I’ve always loved BOTW’s high PR but their regular directory doesn’t seem to deliver the PR to your site so I’m getting to not be a fan…
September 26th, 2008 12:40
I like the idea. Google has a google local site as well. People want to contact local business and institutions. I live in Houston and its a huge city. Its nice to have local options.
October 16th, 2008 12:38
Hey this is a great idea - I am glad to see BOTW developing in this direction. To be honest, I have done some adviertising on it in the past but pretty much saw it as a stale directory. But no, it’s alive!
The first thing I tried was to access info on Toronto LOL I suppose you are busy just trying to get the US sorted out, never mind Canada.
Nice, clean interface, great integration with Google Maps!