French town Eu considers changing name for Web search visibility

Eu, a thousand-year-old coastal town in France, is discussing changing its name. The reason: "Eu" is too hard for Web searchers to find.

A Google search for "Eu" shows no sign of the coastal French town by that name.

If you've ever worked on a website, you know the importance of search. Many companies hire experts to make their websites more visible. There's a whole field devoted to this sort of thing: search engine optimization.

SEO apparently means a lot to tourism too. Google has become a major means for tracking down vacation spots. If tourists can't find information about your town, odds are they're not going to go there.

Therein lies the problem for Eu, which shares its name with the past participle of the French verb avoir, or "to have." It's one of the most common verbs in the language. There's a different problem in English: You'll find search results relating to the European Union (EU) before you ever stumble on one referencing the French town.

The Times Online reports that Eu Mayor Marie-Fraçoise Gaouyer is pushing to change the town's name by expanding it, to Mairie de la Ville d'Eu. She says it must "adapt to modernity." Not surprisingly, she's getting push-back from some of its 8,000 citizens, who are hesitant to throw out the town's long history to cater to Internet-savvy tourists.

We should note that a more specific search, such as for "Eu french town," yields plenty of pages about the place, so adding "Mairie de la Ville" may be overkill. I mean, you don't see any U.S. towns called Springfield tacking on fancy words to stand out.

-- Mark Milian

Comments

[inderweltsein]

The article is inexact.
The mayor is pushing to change the name from Eu to "Ville d'Eu" (which means "Town of Eu" or "Eu Town" ). And not to Mairie de la Ville d'Eu (which means Town Hall of Eu Town).

[Fuego]

Eu also stands for "Estados Unidos" in Spanish which means United States. Although it is also commonly seen as written eeuu

[Max Smith]

“Google and other search engines put a lot of importance on online media reports. If a website was featured in CNN.com, WSJ.com or other major online publications, it will rank much higher than the sites which have hundreds of link-farm-generated links. Does anybody know of a good list of PR firms specializing in online publicity? Publicity Guaranteed (PublicityGuaranteed.com) looks like an attractive option, as they only charge for the results, without any retainers or hourly rates; however they don’t do online-only publicity. AllPublicits.com seems to be the most comprehensive database of publicists and I posted there my RFP for publicists to bid on, but all resulting bids included traditional media. If I had a larger budget, I wouldn’t mind good coverage in traditional media, but I only seek publicity for my SEO campaign, so I need online publicity only