Chile Forum

if you go to nic.cl the domain register for chile, there is only something like 600,000 domains registered (can't remember the exact number) in the .cl tdl, and I bet like 50% of them are just registered and not operational sites. Another 80% of the ones that are operational sites are so poorly constructed, google can not index them. There are only 15 million people in Chile.

If you search google trends, you will find almost no stats kept outside of the key term "Chile". Chile may have a high percentage of internet users, but again the IT field in Chile is fairly basic. Web sites are at the bottom of the bottom, and English web sites are even less common.

That said, if you want to see what Chileans see however in Google you will need to connect through Chile, visit the google.cl, and set your browser to report Spanish. Basically, you need to fool google in to thinking you are Chilean.

Not our niche, so I am not too concerned about google.cl unless I am targeting Chileans for a particular site.


Don't under estimate this forums position however outside of simply Chile. We regularly pop to the front page for things like "expat forum" or "south America forum". Just think of how many of those are out on the internet, that are far larger and better established than we are? I never thought we would hit those terms, so never even bothered trying. They just kind of naturally showed up.

I do put some time and money in keeping us well positioned in the search engines, but a lot of our search engine appeal has simply been the community and the diversity of our topics. Lots of google lovens for the Chile forum.

Last year we seemed to at one point have a lot of people hanging around the forum that had no interest in Chile. They just showed up for the conversation. For example, that gun control thread we had. I got nasty emails from people 6 months after I locked the thread accusing me of all kings of BS, and they where people that I do not think would have been able to find Chile on map from the sounds of the email. They were just ticked that they found that thread, and where not able to add their two sense to it. They where mostly just late, it was nothing personal.

speaking of which. I am in the States now (I will start a thread about that when I get back), and I see at least two of our sites on the front page for "chile south America" in google. allchile.net is #2, and allsouthernchile.com is slightly down at about #8.