Cassis

An interesting life, isn't it?  Do you mean you got permission immediately just by filling in the form at the DDE, or did it have to go through some vetting procedure?  It does seem to be taking ours an inordinate amount of time, but whenever I ask the Mairie they don't seem to think so and I was putting it down to my Anglo-Saxon mentality expecting too rapid a response from officialdom.  Maybe I shouldn't have let the mayor's office deal with it and I should have gone to the DDE myself. Phil

I know we're getting a bit off-subject now, but do you need DDE permission if it's a departmental road but within the confines of a village, Quillan?  Unless I misunderstood him, I thought our mayor said he could provide the necessary permission on the D road through our village provided we put the signs within the boundary of the village name signs.  Outside that and within the commune it required both his and the DDE permission. We decided to put up our signs at a couple of strategic junctions outside the village but inside the commune so we applied for permission from the DDE back in October last year.  Still waiting - Sophie at the Mairie says it's normal! Apparently it's impossible to get permission on National roads and so it's best to negotiate with a landowner.  Do you know anything about that? You may want to shift this post outside this thread!! Phil

Found it!  It's a great little tool, don't have to pay or sign up or download anything. http://www.webrankchecker.com/ Phil[:D]

Hi again You're right about the PR tool tracking your Internet activity but I keep the Google PR function on my toolbar 'cos I don't really mind who knows what I'm doing on the Internet (it's normally pretty bloomin' boring so who cares and I suspect it's not the only way we are being snooped on anyway) and I think the PR thing is handy to have immediately to make sure nowt horrible has happened to my own PR.  Your site is showing PR 3 at present. What I want to know is, if we both have a PR 3 on a page and we were to exchanged links between them, would those pages go up to 6 if we didn't have any other links on those pages? I had a really brilliant little link that enabled you to find your website's ranking (page and position) for a given key word search on google - really handy for honing your <balises> and page titles.  Unlike most similar tools that you find all over the Internet,  it let you put in multiple URLs (so you could also check out the competition) and up to 10 different keyword searches at the same time and gave you the results for each in a neat summary table.  But I lost it when I installed this new computer. [:'(]  If I find it again I'll let you know. Phil

High page rank is 10, lowest zero.  Google's own home page currently has a rank of 9!

All very odd.  I suppose you've no idea at all who these strange people could be.  Best put a block on them, do you think?

[quote user="Quillan"]  However I did reach a google ranking of 1 the other week but I see it's down to 3 again. It normally hovers around 2 or 3 which given the competition is not too bad for a home brew website I think[/quote] Do you mean you reached a PR of 4 and it's down to 3 again?  I think PR 3 isn't too bad, either.  Though I do dream of hitting 4.  But there again, I used to have a PR of zero for about 4 months after I set up the website, yet never did TOO badly on searches for anything to do with Alençon and chambres, chambres d'hotes and the like, and when the PR suddenly popped up to 3 one day it seemed to make damn all difference! Phil

Nice story, Quillan [:D][:D] We're going to try a policy of taking 50% deposit for bookings of three room nights or more and see how it goes the rest of this year.  We have got some more Americans already booked in later in the year for whom we've gone to a lot of trouble to get information on specific sights they are interested in, and they've taken the whole place over for a long weekend, so I hope they show!  I'll email them a fortnight ahead to make sure they are still on course. Jude says she reckons St Amour has a point - a lot of people seem to underestimate how big France is and the time it takes to get around. Phil

It does need to be a hard link.  Every website dedicated to Google ranking that I've looked at says that your page rank is increased by a hard link from another webpage according to the formula PR/L where PR is the Page Rank of the page containing the hard link and L is the number of external hard links on that page.  So if there is a link to your site on a page with a PR of zero you get zero benefit in terms of page rank, and if there are 10 links on the page linking to you the benefit is divided by 10.  But maybe you're not talking about Google Page Rank.  In which case it is possible you may get some benefit in terms of relevancy of your site for a given set of terms used in a google search if the page linking to you has a high density of those same terms.  But I'm not an expert - I'm just repeating what I've picked up from webmaster forums. Phil

Quillan's talking a lot of sense.  NB GdF won't take you if you have 7 rooms - maximum is six. Phil

Oh God, the Mikimeister's not going to pop up everywhere I look, is he? Phil

Over 6 rooms then you're a hotel and in for all sorts of extra fire regs, safety regs  etc.  that don't apply to B&B.   I don't know the details, however I think you need professional legal advice. Phil

Expect a similar one any day now from a bloke called Sarkozy. Phil

Sounds  sensible.  Maybe we've been lucky that we've only had this one no-show so far - is it an American thing, do you think?  Phil

I have often wondered about this.  I'm guessing the only benefit can be from boosting your PR.  But I believe this depends on the PR of the linking page itself and how many other outgoing links it has - so it is no good having a link from a page with a PR of zero.  Could be wrong, of course! Phil

If they don't like using Paypal etc. then another alternative is to ask for a cheque but don't cash it unless they cancel - give them it back when they arrive and take payment in cash. We've never taken deposits in the admittedly short time we've been open - the amounts involved are generally to small to justify it - but we're thinking of doing so for bookings that are more than one room or one night unless we know and trust the client.  This is after a no-show from an American family who booked all our rooms for a weekend and then didn't have the courtesy to let us know they weren't coming.  What's your general policy on deposits? Phil

Wow!  Just back after a month's absence and looks like I've missed something, judging from all the bile and venom spewing forth here.  Just picking up on what John said re. having your website in your signature, most pages on the forum have a PR of zero so I suspect he's right and there's no effect on google rankings. Phil

Hi Russell The A28 between us at Alençon and Rouen opened last October.  It cuts an hour off the journey time to Rouen.  There's a service station opening somewhere between Rouen and Alençon but I gather it doesn't have full facilities yet.  The Tours - Ecommoy section that you're asking about opened in December ahead of schedule.  Here's the new map: www.cofiroute.fr/cofiroute.nsf/web/a28.htm I swear by www.viamichelin.com for route planning. Phil

I believe a lot of people don't bother, whether deliberately or out of ignorance.  Here's the offficial line on the matter: www.netassurances.com/bibliotheque/construction.asp#ouvra Phil

Back to your original question - try looking at the Viamichelin website for routefinding - it is always up to date, warns you about roadworks and fixed speed cameras.  Excellent site in both English and French. Phil

We're near Alençon and the new section of A28 between Rouen and here, which opened at the end of October last year, is a boon.  Cuts an hour off the journey time and so it's now under 4 hours from our place to Calais.  No Rouen bypass yet - still at the consultation stage.  The drive round Rouen is a pain but if you just accept it, go with the flow and don't try to rush it (you can't, anyway!) it's not that bad.  The route round the east side is more pleasant but it does still take a little longer, in our experience.  As for the one-lane bridges, they're now planning to widen some of them - why didn't they do it in the first place? There was a lot of radar activity this weekend because of the 24 hour bike race at Le Mans.  Good chance to fill the public coffers. Phil

[quote user="Owen"]You should never have mentioned B&B activities to the CPAM. [/quote] Absolutely right.  Another one of the many things that I can add to my list of 'With the benefit of hindsight I would have done it differently'.  And the chap who is advising us on tax matters also confirms what you say, that there is no obligation to register a small B&B with the Chamber of Commerce or any other business registry. While we are very hopeful this time, I'm trying not to count any chickens till we actually get a letter confirming affiliation from the CPAM. Phil

Just to close this subject off (permanently, I hope).  At my latest meeting with a representative of the CPAM today he suggested that I sign an declaration (attestation) saying that we had ceased our B&B activity.  When I queried this(!) he said it was purely a formality to get us into the system and affiliated to the CPAM.  We could recommence the B&B activity tomorrow and no questions would be asked - we would continue to be affiliated to the CPAM. Strikes us an odd connivance and a strange way to run a health system, but there you go.  We're hoping that's the end of it. Phil

Hi Sid No, I wouldn't reply to anything that I'm not sure about.  But the first one looked like a genuine enquiry apart from the subject line 'B' which could have been a typing mistake. It wasn't picked up by the anti-spam filters (not that you can totally rely them). Only when the second one arrived did I suspect anything. That's why I thought I would post this message, just in case anyone else received something similar. All the best Phil

Has anyone else received any weird emails with the subject line:B We've had 2 today, one on the face of it asking about brocante holidays and another about holidays taking in the D-Day Beaches.  Very similar format, different (on the face of it) senders, both from AOL.com addresses. Both emails asked for acknowledgment that the message had been read - possibly setting off a load of spoof emails?  I don't know for sure.  I actually replied to the first one and I think it was a mistake - I got a bounce-back from AOL saying that I was blocked for sending spam. Phil