In the last September editorial, I gave an idea of how many Audio sites make use of our articles, both in English and in different languages (French, Spanish, Chinese...). Well, those were Audio-related sites only.
This month I'd like to draw your attention to non-audio sites that cite our articles and/or our site as a valuable source for truly independent Audio info.

First of all let me cite the famous Product Review Net, a large consumer-service that collects various professional reviews on the Net, selecting the most reliable ones and then grouping them into relevant areas of interest.
On Product Review Net you can find professional reviews of almost anything made on Earth. And of course, there's an Audio section. Guess what?, under the General Audio section you can find your TNT-Audio!
This means that even non-audiophile customers in search of something audio can be convinced to buy True HiFi gear instead of cheap/fancy HiFi mini-combos. Not bad.

Similarly, one of the most famous Italian newspapers, the Corriere della Sera, has recently chosen TNT-Audio as a must-visit site for their "Home Entertainment" section. Rarely - dare I say NNVER? - the mass-media have paid so much attention to our favourite hobby. Normally they devote large articles to MP3 music, video clips and popstars' silly gossip.

Another general interest site that has chosen TNT-Audio as a source for reliable info on Audio is the Open Directory Project by Netscape and Google. Yes, if you go and visit the Google Directory, you'll find that the most relevant site they suggest under the section Consumer Information - Reviews - Products - Electronics - AudioEquipment is, again, your TNT-Audio. Near the link you may notice there's a small logo. Well, that logo refers to the "relevance" of the information contained into the link. Google assigns a "ranking" to each suggested site as follows:

The green ratings bars are a measure of the importance of a web page, as determined by Googlès patent-pending PageRank technology.
These PageRank bars tell you at a glance whether other people on the web consider a page to be a high-quality site worth checking out. Google itself does not evaluate or endorse websites. Rather, we measure what others on the web feel is important enough to deserve a link. And because Google does not accept payment for placement within our results, the information you see when you conduct a search is based on totally objective criteria.
Horizontal bars, which are displayed next to each web page, indicate the importance of the page, as determined by PageRank. This distinctive approach to ranking web sites enables the highest quality pages to appear first as top results for any Google directory category.

This kind of "popularity" isn't something you can buy, pay for or whatever. It all depends on how good is considered the information provided by your site. If it was a mere question of "money", other commercial HiFi magazines/sites would have ranked higher than us.
Conversely we believe that the fact we are strictly non-commercial allows us to be considered more independent (and hence, more reliable) than our competitors :-)

Finally, let me inform you that now TNT-Audio is listed even into the Yahoo international Directory, under the obvious section Audio. This will bring us many more visitors (and it's happening, actually). TNT-Audio has also been Yahoo's site of the week into the Italian Yahoo directory.

As we always say, money isn't everything. The satisfaction we get - daily - from you dear readers (and professionals) is something money couldn't ever buy.

© Copyright 2000 Lucio Cadeddu - http://www.tnt-audio.com