Web Watch by Web Search Advisor

Looking to Purchase Real Estate? Naturally, real estate is very location specific. The best places to look on the web is at sites that are managed in your target location. There are also some top national web sites to start at. The main one being the National Association of Realtors web site at www.realtor.com.

If you are looking for particularly high end property check out www.luxuryhomes.com.

Visit www.homegain.com, a site subscription service for realtors. Homegain offers valuable services to homeowners looking to sell and provides buyers with online access to finding the right realtor.

Use HomeGain to find homes for sale and real estate listings, including the MLS, your local Multiple Listing Service. Find homes, properties and houses for sale in your neighborhood. Also, find new homes from America’s premier builders and foreclosure homes for sale.

For listings of foreclosure homes go to www.realtytrac.com, a HomeGain web site.

For non-profit, non-commercial information the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development is the place to go. You can get a listing of “HUD” owned properties and learn about HUD property buying procedures.

Did you know that the keyword “recipes” is consistently in the top 50 keywords searched on the web every week?

Tried-and-tested recipes from magazines, restaurant chefs and home cooks can be found in abundance on the web. While you can probably type in the ingredients or name of a traditional meal into a search engine and come up with thousands of recipes, it may help to know a few web sites that really shine when it comes to providing free recipes.

Here are a few of those web sites:

epicurious.com
Web site offers a comprehensive collection of free tried-and-tested, regularly updated recipes from past issues of Gourmet and Bon Appétit magazines, as well as from epicurious.com registered members. The site is interactive allowing you to create your own online recipe box and submit, rate and review recipes. You can sign up for e-newsletters as well.

allrecipes.com
Free recipes compiled from a community of home cooks. Submit, rate and review recipes online. Sign up for e-newsletters and read articles and information about ingredients.

cooksrecipes.com
A small business owned cooking site offering online culinary help, a searchable index of recipes, daily tips and trivia.

cooking.com
An online shopping site mainly, with an easy to use search for recipes and feature articles from trusted and reputable sources including Cooks’ Catalogue - the definitive guide to cooking equipment; top magazines including Cooking Light, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking and Taste of Home; and trusted brands such as Nestle, Betty Crocker and Crisco.

ecookbookmall.com
A featured merchant on the epicurious.com web site, ecookbookmall.com, also known as Jessica’s Biscuit is a comprehensive cookbook shopping site.

Next week, I’ll be looking at real estate web sites and let you know where to start your search pertaining to all aspects of real estate, buying and selling, financing, government programs, law and more.

I recently had the opportunity to answer some questions for the local Chamber of Commerce. The questions are those on the mind of small business owners thinking about getting a web site. Here are the questions and my answers. Maybe one of these questions have been on your mind….

How important is it for a small business to have a web presence? What are some of the benefits of having a web presence?
Many small business owners today are motivated to have a web presence because their prospects and customers ask for it. More than 60% of consumers start with the web to get information before making a purchase. They go the web for the following reasons:

to start the process of learning about a product or service
to learn about features and benefits of a product
to learn about different brands.
For businesses that don’t have a web site, but would like to, what is the first step?
The first step is to consider the content of your web site. Consider your marketing message, etc. Organize your services into categories. These will be the names of your navigation buttons on your site to make it easy for visitors to understand what it is you offer.

If you decide to create a web site on your own, what is the most important thing for you to know.
Technically speaking, the first step is to register your domain name with a reputable domain registrar such as Network Solutions (http://www.netsol.com/) and save your account information in a safe place. Your web site operations all stem from your domain name record. So, it is important that you register it with a reputable company with a flexible interface. As a beginner you need the flexibility to make changes later on as you become more knowledgeable with web services.

If you decide to have a professional create a web site for you, what kinds of questions should you ask of that person? What sort of information or material will you need to provide to the site’s designer?
When considering a professional for your web site design consider their graphic design as well as their technical experience. The web design profession requires a balance of knowledge in both artistic ability and technical understanding of html, the language of the web. Furthermore, marketing and writing experience should also be considered.

Provide your web designer with as much as you can about your business goals including your mission statement, your goals for the web site, e.g. inspiring contacts or selling products. Organize your services into categories and be as specific as possible. Provide detailed information about yourself, such as professional memberships and awards. This informations helps gain the trust of your visitors.

Have an idea of the color scheme you’d like. If you have printed materials, such as a business card or brochure and a logo give them to the web designer. Whatever you can provide electronically on disk, cdrom or email in .jpg format or text files is ideal.

About how much can you expect a quality web site design to cost?
A quality web site design starts at $500.00. Prices vary greatly from one designer to the next and from one web design company to the next. You may pay more for a graphic artist to design your site than you would with a web design company, because of the way their business is structured. The web design may be a personal hourly service when hiring a graphic artist, while a web design company that also provides maintenance service and hosting may offer fixed fee plans.

What does the term hosting a web site mean? How much should you expect to pay annualy for web site hosting?
Hosting a web site is the service that allows a web site to be navigable by web users. A specially configured computer system with special software is required for hosting. Also, the host computer must have high speed reliable access to the internet. Typically hosting computers are in secure server rooms with other hosting computers throughout the world .

What should a business consider when choosing a domain name? How does one go about registering a domain name?
Consider the domain name to be the same as your company name. Also consider having your best “keyword” in the domain name. Consider the length and ease of typing it. I recommend registering your name with a trusted domain name registrar or web design firm. The safest and most flexible place to register your domain name is with Network Solutions, (http://www.netsol.com/). They are not the cheapest, but they offer the most services at reasonable prices, services you may not know you will need down the road, such as domain name forwarding. Network Solutions also has a security feature that keeps your ownership contact information private.

Register your domain name online with a credit card. Domain names are charged an annual fee and can be registered for multiple years at once. Retain your account and password information in a safe place. Keep your name, address and most importantly your email account on the record up to date and make note of the expiration date. Also, don’t fall for renewal scams in the mail. Know who your registrar is and their renewal policies. Most will only contact you via email regarding expiration.

How often should a site be updated? What are the benefits of doing the update yourself? What are the drawbacks to doing it yourself?
The frequency that you update the site really depends. More important than frequency is building content. Updating your site with additional information routinely, adding to the useful information people are looking for is ideal. So, if your frequent updates include adding content, the more often you do it, the better!

To help with the appearance of a fresh up to date site here are some ideas: Have a blog that automatically updates on your site. Have an automatic date script. Add seasonal specials. Change out photos for the season.

Is there anything else ChamberWorks readers should know about web site design, hosting or the benefits of having a web site?
Yes, it is important to design your site to be search engine friendly and to obtain links coming in to your site from other web sites. While not a guarantee, it is a long term strategy that will help your position in search engine results for many targeted keywords. Do some keyword analysis before and while you are designing your web site. See http://www.wordtracker.com/ for a free trial of a keyword analysis service.

Can you recommend any sites or books that would offer readers good, basic information about understanding web technology?
Yes, for the beginner business owner who wants to understand the web, there are a lot of books in the dummies series and the like to get you started. For understanding how search engines work I highly recommend “‘Search Engine Visibility” by Shari Thurow (Copyright 2003). For do-it-yourselfers you want to find a reference book on html and javascript such as those in the O’Reilly series. There are numerous books on web marketing, such as Cybermarketing, Essentials For Success and Deep Branding On The Internet. There are some great e-newsletters too: See about.com - web design, searchenginewatch.com and webpronews.com.

Want to learn more about that painting you found in the attic or that
old framed print hanging on grandma’s wall?

A simple search at google may turn up plenty of information about famous artists such as Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Monet. But to find information about not-so-famous artists you really need to know where to look.

So, put on your detective cap and navigate over to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Here are two great links at the web site to get you started:

Researching Your Art
Search Collections
Researching Your Art includes first steps, biographical resources, appraisal resources, specific guidelines for prints and posters and more. The Search Collections link lets you search the museum’s collection of over 40,000 works of art by American artists.

The site also has an “Ask Joan of Art” section where you can ask the experts at the museum a question about your artwork. They will respond with a brief factual answer and will direct you to sources that will aid your research.

Here are a list of web sites to help you further:

Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM)
See Researching Your Art for getting started tips for art collectors. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is dedicated to art and artists of the United States.

The museum maintains a number of specialized art databases at this link: Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS). The Art Inventories database lets you search, by artist name, over 360,000 works in public and private collections nationwide.

At this link you can search the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection of 40,000 artworks. More than 18,000 are illustrated online. You can search for specific artworks by artist name, painting title, art work type or art work subject.

tfaoi.com
Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc. A resource for collectors, life long learners and students of Art History. See this subsection of the site:http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa215n.htm. There is a good page on how and where to get appraisals of original art objects.

the-artists.org
A portal for research on visual arts for art lovers, art students, artists, art historians, large and small collectors, museum curators, art gallery owners and exhibition organisers. The site contains an extended database of 20th Century and contemporary visual artists. The masters of the past hundred years are represented.

getty.edu
The Getty Museum & Research Institute. Book catalogues and art collections databases. See The Getty Provenance (history) Research Database.

Also try these databases at getty.edu:
The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)® The AAT is a structured vocabulary of more than 133,000 terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture.

The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)® The ULAN is a structured vocabulary containing more than 225,000 names and biographical and bibliographic information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.

ask-art.com
Easy to search for specific works of art by artist name. View an artist biography, photographs of art works, auction records and more. Offers limited information for free.

artnet.com
An on-line gallery facilitating the research, buying and selling of fine art. Has more than 90,000 works by over 18,000 artists.

While the above list includes web sites that you might come across in your google or yahoo searches, a few of the sites, the ones that link to searchable databases are not easily found through the search engines. Due to technical limitations, data within databases is generally invisible to search engines.

For future reference, the above links can be found on the www.websearchadvisor.com web site in the Fine Art category.

Happy Collecting!

About the Author
Margaret O’Connor brings over 18 years of technical experience in the software industry to her web hosting and design business, Wickford Web Works. Margaret, regularly writes reviews and tips on searching the web for Web Search Advisor, a useful site for consumers and small business owners.

Have you ever wanted to look up information about your state government or that of another state. Or perhaps you’ve needed to find court records or do a criminal background check on someone in your state or another state? Here are some tips to help you find and search through state web sites.

Most, but not all state web sites use the domain extension .us. When the web was in its infancy it was standard practice. The .us domain extension is now open to any web site owner and many states use domains with .org or .com extensions too.

Even with the changes, you can navigate to the vast majority of state web sites using
the following URL syntax in a browser’s Address field:

www.state.xx.us (where xx is the state’s postal abbreviation)

For example, the following URLs will take you to state web sites for Rhode Island, California and Maine.

www.state.ri.us
www.state.ca.us
www.state.me.us
Furthermore, these URLs can be expanded to find county and city web sites within states.

For example:

www.co.greenwood.sc.us
www.co.alameda.ca.us
www.ci.portland.or.us
www.ci.boston.ma.us
www.ci.atlanta.ga.us/
To list many more of the state web sites at google, type the following into the google search box:
inurl:www.*.*state.us (where state is the postal abbreviation)

For example, try the following at google:

inurl:www.*.*.ga.us
inurl:www.*.*.*.ga.us
To list the web site for the Courts or Judiciary for the states try:

inurl:www.courts.state.*.us
The Judiciary web site for each state will have further information on requesting court/criminal records or even an online database that you can search.

Finally, try out Google’s Uncle Sam search engine:

www.google.com/unclesam
Searching for keywords at this link will narrow down your search to government and military web sites.

So, you have a web site now, and you’re doing some searches in Google, Yahoo, MSN or perhaps AOL — typing in words that represent the services or products your web site promotes, but your web site doesn’t show up in the first few links that display in the “natural” section of search results.

You can always “bid” money for keywords and have your site appear in the “sponsored listings” sections of Search Results. This is a good short term option or seasonal option for many businesses. You can turn your ads on and off and and create and modify them yourself. But, this can still be too costly for some.

I’ve had many people ask me, “So how do I get my web site to show up on that first page of search results?” Well, the answer is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Search Engine Optimization has changed a lot over the years. The tricks that worked a few years ago, no longer work today. On the other hand, many of the basics, the common sense techniques that have always been a part of Search Engine Optimization continue to work.

Note: Search Engines use algorithms that “rank” web pages. Web pages with higher “rank” will have higher positions in search engine results.

One of the biggest obstacles today is that competition for keywords is growing everyday with new web pages being added, on every topic you can think of.. from arts and crafts to real estate and mortgages to travel and government.

Search Engine Optimization, the common sense approach, involves improving 3 main components of a web site:

Keywords
Navigation
Popularity
Sites at the highest optimization level for all 3 of these components for any given keyword are the ones that appear at the top of the search result pages.

You may wonder about the search results sometimes though. The first result is sometimes a link to a web site with no text on the home page and has poorly designed navigation.

This can happen because a site that is very popular, but doesn’t have a good keyword component or a good navigation component can “rank” well. Similarly, a site with a good keyword component and popularity can “rank” well even though it may have a low navigation component.

The keyword component of a site involves frequency, density and placement. Keyword selection is very important. You must spend some time putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think “What would I type into a search engine if I was looking for my service”. The keywords, meaning text throughout your site and text that is in hidden codes called “meta tags”, on your site must match those typed into search engine forms.

Creating a consistent, simply coded navigation system for the site is important so that the search engines can find all the pages of your site and include them in their indexes.

Note: Only web pages in the search engines “index” can be returned in search results. A site has to first be in the “index” before it even has a chance of getting “ranked” and being in the search results.

Some sites use drop down menus, image maps and flash animation for the navigatoin links. The technology sometimes used for these links is not search engine friendly. This is why web developers will often place navigation links at the bottom of the site as simple underlined text links….so the search engines can follow the links and include all the pages of a site in its index.

The popularity component is probably the most challenging of the 3 components. Popularity is measured by the quantity and quality of links coming to your site. A link from a highly “ranked” and popular site is more valuable than a link from a smaller, less popular site. How often visitors are clicking on links to your site and staying on your site are considerd as well. For example, if a popular news or magaizine site, like www.forbes.com, contains a review of your new financial blog along with a link to your web site, your search engine “popularity” would increase, but perhaps even more importantly, your traffic would increase. You would have new visitors without even relying on search engines.

Creating keyword rich content and a search engine friendly navigation system puts your site in position to be ranked by the search engines and contributes to your optimzation. But, it is the reaching out to popular web sites, like news sites, trade publications, directory sites and others to recognize the value of your services and products that will drive targeted, quality visitors to your site.

To learn more download a free white paper - The 7 Steps to Effective Search Engine Marketing for more information on search engine optimization.

Do you just plug in a keyword or two and hope for the best? That may be the easiest way to search, but with more than 3 billion pages in google’s index, it can be a time consuming struggle to pare results down and find exactly what you’re looking for.

Here are some advanced tips to help your next search go a little quicker:

Searching Within Results
If you typically start your search with a very general keyword, consider the following. After you type in your keyword and the results show 2 million web pages, scroll to the bottom of the results page and click the link: “Search Within Results”. Then, type in a keyword to narrow down the results further. For example, you might first try “American Painters”. Then, to narrow the results down further, in the “Search Within Results” type in “History”, for example, if you are looking for information on the History of American Painters.

Interpreting Search Results
Have you often searched for a keyword phrase, clicked on the link of a result, then had to scroll through a very long page of text and perhaps not even find the section of the page with the info you were looking for?

If this happens to you, before you click on a result, look for a link labeled “Cached”. Clicking the cached link will enable you to see the contents of the web page as of the time it was indexed. Your search terms are highlighted on the cached version.

Visit the Google help for more information on interpreting search results.

Local Search
Google now has a local search feature. (click “more” at google.com and then click “local”) Local search gives you two fields “what” and “where”. In the what field type your keyword and in the where field type you city and state. This is great for locating service professionals in your area. Results are compiled from web sites and online yellow pages, like superpages.com.

Google’s Advanced Search Option
Using the “Advanced Search” option with Google you can narrow down your search to just the “title” of web pages or to the “text” or to the “URL”. These options are presented in a menu form when you click “Advanced Search” next to the search form field at www.google.com. Or you can use the following commands within the Google Search form field.

Narrow down where keywords occur:

intitle: At the beginning of a query word or phrase (intitle:”Jimmy Buffet”) restricts your search results to just the titles of Web pages.

intext: Searches only the body text of web pages.

allinanchor: Searches only links on web pages.

filetype: Combined with another operator (allinanchor:”thai recipes” filetype:pdf) narrows down your search to files of a specific type.

site: If you know the website you want to search but aren’t sure where the information is located within that site, you can search only that domain.
(site: admission site:www.stanford.edu). Or use with another operator to narrow down the domain extensions to search. (intitle:Impressionism site:edu)
(Note: quotes around keywords means the complete phrase exactly as entered is searched for)

You can also limit your search to web sites that have recently been updated from the “Advanced Search” page.
Find related pages:

link: lets you see which pages are linking to your Web page or to another page you’re interested in. For example, try typing in link:http://www.webmd.com.
Google Preferences:

Change the “Number of Results” Instead of only 10 search results displayed change it to 50 or 100. Then you can quickly scroll through as many results as you probably want to without having to click the “next” button at the bottom of each page.
More Google Tips

Google ignores “stopwords”. These are words like, a, an, any, the , to, of, that. If you want to include one of these words in a keyword search put quotes around it (”Man of La Mancha”).

Add the Google toolbar to your web browser from the Google Download page. The toolbar lets you perform a Google search without first navigating to the Google web site.

Try Google Answers. Over 500 researchers are available (for a fee as little as $2.50) to find what you’re looking for. Answers, but not your private information are displayed for all to see and search through.
While Google is first and foremost a major Search Engine, there is a lot more behind the scenes. If you click the Google “more” button on their home page you will see a list of search services and tools available for free. For example, from the from Google Tools section page you can download the Picasa Photo Organizer. With Picasa you can organize, edit and easily send your digital photos to others.

Happy Googling!

Blog is short for Web Log. A blog is a web page that is updated on a regular basis, and contains information on a specific topic. Blogs got their start as a place to make journal entries on the web. Some typical uses of a blog are to record personal events, political views and social commentaries. A blog can be shaped into whatever you want it to be, even a newsletter, just like this one.

The term “blog” was so popular during the 2004 presidential election that it was the number 1 search word on the Merriam-Webster dictionary web site, http://www.m-w.com/. It is now an official word in the dictionary.

A blog has become a great way for businesses to communicate with their customers. A blog accessible from a web site as a newsfeed gives visitors a reason to come back. Blogs are also included in search engine searches and offer advantages for increasing a web site’s page rank.

To get started creating a blog visit www.blogger.com, a Google owned site.
What’s great about a blog is that you can edit and post your content with an easy to use web based interface. You don’t need to be a web designer/master. Blogs are available to anyone and everyone for free.

If you are a business person you may want to consult your web designer/master about adding an “RSS” or “XML” newsfeed to your web site so that your blog postings can be read by your visitors automatically after each posting you make. You don’t have to write your E-News, for example, send it to your web master and wait for it to be posted. You can have a link from your web site to your blog automatically updated using “RSS” or “XML” technology (more on this below).

If you are interested in reading today’s popular blogs then it’s time to learn about “Newsreaders”. With a Newsreader you can subscribe to and read blogs of interest to you.
You may be thinking this sounds a lot like News Groups (See Google Groups). Newsfeeds are similar to News Groups in that you can subscribe to topics of interest to you. They differ however, in their underlying technology and purpose.

Newsreaders are either downloadable programs that look a lot like your email reader, (MS Outlook, for example) or they are web based. Some are free and some have a cost. A good free one to get started with is the web based newsreader, Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/).

Visit http://www.atomenabled.org/everyone/atomenabled/index.php?c=5 for a comprehensive list of newsreaders.

Now, what is “XML” and “RSS”? As you’ve been surfing the web, you may have come across these small icons on web sites that say, “xml” or “rss” like this:

If you come across a site of interest and it has one of these icons, select the icon and drag it into your open newsreader to subscribe. Newsreaders vary though, and for some you may need to enter the “URL” of the blog (newsfeed) to subscribe. For example, the URL of the Web Watch blog newsfeed is: http://www.websearchadvisor.com/atom.xml, which you can determine by clicking on the “xml” icon on the www.websearchadvisor.com web site, and noting the URL displayed in your browser’s Address field.

I hope I’ve given you enough information to at least get you started reading blogs. For the web site owner think of blogs as a way of syndicating your E-News or of “pushing” your information out to the web (yes, this just may replace email newsletters). For web site searchers consider opening your newsreader and searching the next time you’re looking for information on the web. You may find more timely information quicker than with a general purpose search engine.

Do you start every web search with a visit to Google? There are many specialized resources out there that offer much better quality search results than you can get with a general purpose search engine, especially when it comes to shopping. Shopping Search sites return keyword search results that include product listings from multiple vendors so you can easily compare prices, reviews, availability and more.

Here are some of the most popular sites to start with the next time you’re looking for that particular item online.

BizRate

http://www.bizrate.com/

BizRate allows you to search for products from hundreds of online vendors. Features include merchant ratings, reviews, price and availability. Allows an easy interface for sorting and searching by price range, brand and other product attributes as applicable. Compare Products button lets you see prices for the same product from multiple vendors. Includes paid listings by vendors as well as free listings.

Shopping

http://www.shopping.com/
http://www.epinions.com/
http://www.dealtime.com/

A major comparison shopping search engines very much like bizrate.com above. Integrates product reviews from Epinions, an unbiased forum for reading and giving product reviews. Owned by DealTime, another shopping search engine site. DealTime includes the ability to calculate tax and shipping based on your zip code when comparing prices. Includes paid listings by vendors.

Froogle

http://www.froogle.com/

Comparison shopping search engine from Google. Gathers listings from crawling the web and accepting free product feeds from vendors. Pay Per Click keyword advertisements with “Google” also appear on “Froogle”.

MSN Shopping

http://shopping.msn.com/

MSN Shopping offers some features beyond those mentioned above, including quick links to editor suggestions, free shipping sites, gift ideas and email alert signup. Includes an easy to read department listing for quick linking to the category of product you’re searching for. Advertisers on MSN Shopping are your larger retailers with annual advertising budgets >40K.

mySimon

http://www.mysimon.com/

Easy to use shopping search, featuring many of the same features as bizrate.com and shopping.com. You can see ratings, compare prices, including tax and shipping, see availability. There are varying levels of vendor advertising, including a low cost Pay Per Click model. MySimon is part of the CNET.com network of web sites. Cnet is a global content company that informs, entertains and connects people with a focus on consumer and business technology, games and entertainment.

NexTag

http://www.nextag.com/

Comparison shopping search engine featuring store ratings, product reviews and a “TruePrice” feature that shows prices including tax and shipping charges. In addition to product categories, the site recently launched sections for Mortgages, Travel (Flights, Car Rental, Hotels, etc.) and Cars. Vendors join a Pay Per Click advertising program, allowing the small retailer to list products on the site. Special leads purchasing is available to Licensed Mortgage Brokers and Real Estate Agents.

PriceGrabber

http://www.pricegrabber.com/

Comparison shopping search engine with vendor ratings, product condition ratings, product reviews and tax and shipping calculations. Products are listed by stores and individuals selling new or used products. PriceGrabber takes a commission only when the product is sold. (approx. $1 + 4.75%). Site is available in English and Spanish.

Yahoo Shopping

http://shopping.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! Shopping connects you with thousands of merchants-traditional retail stores, name-brand catalog companies, small boutiques, and specialty vendors that create and host their web sites with “Yahoo Store”. Pay Per Click listings are available to retailers outside the Yahoo Store network.

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com

Reviews and price comparisons categorized and searchable. In a similar fashion to “Yahoo Store”, Amazon offers a store creation and hosting service. Vendors can also sell used and new items individually on Amazon, like they can on pricegrabber.com. Amazon takes a commission only when the product is sold.

PriceSCAN

http://www.pricescan.com/

PriceSCAN offers an unbiased (no sponsored listings) product comparison site. Products and prices are compiled from magazine ads, vendor catalogs and web sites.

eDealFinder

http://www.edealfinder.com/

This site offers comparative product listings and has a special section of online coupon deals. You can sign up for email alerts to be notified when new deals are found.

Also try out these Local Search Sites. These sites let you specify your city, state and zip and return product listings for brick and mortar stores in you area.

StepUp

http://www.stepup.com/

Enter your location and then choose to shop “local” or “online”. Fast way to find products from your your local retailers, with an easy to use interface.

shopLocal

http://www.shoplocal.com/

Easy to use interface that lets you add products from local retailers to a shopping list. Print your list and take it shopping with you. Online purchasing is available from many merchants too. Technology supports many newspaper sites and shopping portals.

Finally, shop smart online. Visit the Better Business Bureau at http://www.bbbonline.org/ for more information, recommendations and warnings for online shopping.