Sicily Guide

There are zillions of web sites about Sicily on the web today. When you search under the word Sicily, Google displays 13,600,000 results. Oh my God! I am passionate about Sicily, but I do not think I am going to check all of these results one by one. I know that these web sites are not all worthwhile. Sicily is not well presented on the Internet - only a few web sites do the job right and search engines have rewarded them, so consumers.
Statistics show that people look only at the top 10 results displayed on the first page. Some of the most complete web sites about Sicily are displayed on the first page of Google; others are new to the game and are not. So, besides sticking with the best ranked sites, I also went beyond the first page of Google results to find other interesting web sites that matched my interests and my idea of how Sicily should be portrayed online.Wikipedia/Sicily
The free content multilingual encyclopedia, which is constantly enriched with new collaborative content, was launched by Jimmy Wales in 2001 and now is one of the most visited web sites in the world. The wiki (collaborative web site that allows surfers to change content without registering) tends to be extremely search engine friendly. This explains its #1 position in the search engine ranking.
Pros: contents of Wikipedia about Sicily are good and easy to find. Cons: the wiki tends to be graphically limited and gives only a general overview.

Best of Sicily
This web site is the richest English language web site about Sicily I know of. You can find any type of information about Sicily on it. It is in plain html, but it looks almost like a wiki web site. “Best of Sicily” is well linked to many other web sites about Sicily and cited both on the Internet and offline.
Pros: accuracy and amount of information. Cons: content is not well organized, making it hard to find your way around on the web site. Also, pages are hard to read due to the heavy content.

Sicilia in Dettaglio
This web site is in English and Italian. Dettaglio means “detail” in Italian. I find that Sicily is truly shown in precise detail on this web site.
Pros: English and Italian translations; it contains information on almost any single village of Sicily. Cons: it looks too commercial with paid text links on the top of the page; site architecture is not clear.

Sicily’s Tourism Department
This web site is hard to find and shows all the limits of an already outdated institutional web site.
Pros: English and Italian; complete database of travel related businesses in Sicily. Cons: the navigation is messy and the URL is impossible to remember.

Sicily Web
It is probably the most complete and organized site about Sicily from this list
Pros: English and Italian, great for tracking events in Sicily! Cons: It is a bit too commercial.

Love Sicily
I found this web site through my feed aggregator and I loved it. The site supports RSS. It contains a nice blog that markets culinary tours and stays in the southeastern part of Sicily.
Pros: appealing, clear site architecture, engaging content and tone. Cons: it does not seem to be updated on a regular basis.

thinkSicily
This is a commercial site launched by Rossella and Huw Beaugie. Based in London, it started as a villa rental business and grew into a sophisticated online travel agency. It still offers villa rentals in Sicily, but lots of other tours have been added.
Pros: vast selections of beautiful villas in Sicily, great pictures and straightforward navigation. Cons: I cannot think of one: I requested their brochure online and I cannot stop thinking about those beautiful Sicilian villas as my ideal summer vacation.

Sicily Scene Blog
Great blog of a retired English teacher from Cardiff who now lives in Sicily. I always like to see the point of view of non-Sicilians, especially when it is so spontaneous. The blog is not pretentious and it does the job right.
Pros: the tone is passionate; the blog is currently updated and the English is great! Cons: no real downside… I am a Sicilian living abroad and this blog makes me miss Sicily too much!

Final considerations
The good thing is that search engines find a great deal about Sicily in English, but I hate to say that there are only a few gems out there. Most of the travel web sites about Sicily are commercial and lack the passion needed to involve people. Some hotels’ web sites that I have not included in this list are graphically interesting, but they are missing the boat of online marketing and Web 2.0 as well. I think that there are tons of smart and inexpensive opportunities to market Sicily on the Internet in a serious way, but nobody has yet to pick on this.

If you think I missed some great web site about Sicily, please leave a comment. I will be happy to review and give my opinion on it.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed under Online Travel Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.