Eu, a small town in North France, ranks rather poorly in search engines as “EU” may mean lot of other things – it could refer to the more popular “European Union” or search engines might relate that term to the .eu web domains of Europe or even the Chemical symbol for Europium.
The query “eu” is fairly popular among Google users but a lot of potential tourists may be missing the scenic beauty of this French town as it doesn’t rank that well in search engines.
Marie-Françoise Gaouyer, the mayor of that historic town, has therefore decided to change the name of that town with a few extra syllables to improve organic rankings. Residents of the entire town will now vote to choose the new name, with Ville d’Eu (Town of EU), Eu-le-Château and Eu-en-Normandie as the top contenders.
This change in name could take as long as 5 years to become legal so Marie-Françoise could instead consider advertising on Google pages via Adwords or the town may hire an SEO firm to boost their rankings. [via]
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/search/french-town-changing-name-for-google/7611/
Reader Comments
Kinda sad how technology is running our lives these days.
Written by Michael on 02.25.09
Very interesting news… on how Google Search affects the Tourism of a beautiful town…
Also I wonder why does it takes years to change the name of the town…
Written by Fasil on 02.25.09
There is still a problem: a large majority of people from Eu do not agree.. And the mayor of the city seems to have abandoned the project.
Written by Jean-Noël on 02.26.09
This is a joke, right? It isn’t April the first, though. :/
Written by LOL on 02.26.09
That would be great to see a useful “google bomb” that made the link to their tourist site the number one hit for “eu”.
Written by Cliff on 02.26.09
Eu-en-Normandie? I dun no me franco frund, Eu-en-Normandie did wut?!
Written by Eueueu on 02.26.09
Well the city already has it’s own website. Some parts are still under construction so I presume they’re planning to create non-French info sites too or?? Googleability for tourism purposes needs English, German, Dutch and other language infos on the website. Bonne chance Eu!
Written by Gerry on 02.26.09
“Ville d’Eu (Town of EU)”
Its translation is ‘Town of Eu’, not ‘Town of EU’ –– the name change is not to do with the European Union, it’s just putting ‘Town of’ in front of their current name.
Written by Luke on 02.26.09
Interesting problem, although not uncommon, rare to hear it about a town’s name ranking. At Core3, we perform SEA (AdWords) and SEO campaigns to optimize positions of keywords within SERPs (search engine results page). We would love to offer our services to help this unique issue for the French city.
Thanks!
Written by Jessica on 02.27.09
Besides, mayor = maire in french, and ” mayor of eu” sound like “maire d’eu” sound like “merdeu” which means Shitty in english.
Written by david on 02.28.09
The reason it will take years to change the name is thanks to the excruciatingly slow bureaucracy that France enjoys!
Still, I wonder what the town will end up as…
Written by Ruairidh on 03.02.09
I hope that they don´t realize this project. Only changing the name because of the search enginges is not a real argument. Just remeber: Content (the city itself in this context ) is king – and not the domain name/city name! ;-)
Written by René on 03.03.09