Mr. GOOGLE Is Your Best Friend!

How the heck do you find out about festivals and events anyway? That’s the big question Judi and I asked ourselves when we first started out on our adventures. As we began to consider visiting festivals we were lost. Where to go? What to see? How to get there? You can see our dilemma. Fortunately we had just joined Festivals and Events Ontario (FEO) and had attended their annual convention. There they handed out a booklet called “Festivals & Events in Ontario”. This comprehensive guide, developed by Festivals and Events Ontario in partnership with the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation, can be obtained at most tourism offices and kiosks. The guide is updated throughout the year and you can visit either the FEO website (http://www.festivalsandeventsontario.ca/) or the Tourism Ontario website (http://www.ontariotravel.net/) for updates and further festival information. Reading through the guide gave us a lot of information about which festivals were available and when, but it didn’t nor couldn’t (the book would be about 12 large volumes!) give much information about each event. I wanted to get to the “meat” of the festivals we wanted to visit. Enter the Internet stage right! But, and this is a big BUT not all websites have domain names that match their festivals name. Yes, the guide does show a lot of the festival website addresses and a lot of them will actually get you to the correct website, but not all of them. Here’s an example of what I mean. The Peterborough Festival of Trees’ website is not www.peterboroughfestivaloftrees.ca rather, it is http://www.pfot.org/. This one is fairly easy to understand, but let’s say you want to find out about the Georgian Bay Kayak and Canoe Festival. You would think that the website address would be http://www.georgianbaykayakandcanoefestival.ca/ or something like that. Nope, you’d be way off. It’s actually http://www.whitesquall.com/. Why you might ask is that the web address? It’s simple dear reader, the festival is run by The White Squall Paddling Centre and Outdoor Gear Store and that’s their website! Unfortunately connecting the dots is not always simple. Scary isn’t it! When this happens and the festival name and domain name are not the same and you want/need the festivals information, what can you do? Here comes Mr. GOOGLE to the rescue! The Goggle search engine is likely the most comprehensive search site on the Internet. Yes, there are others and plenty of them, but I use Google because I am confident that it will lead me to the information I want. If you’re not an “OLD PRO” like me, and you are not familiar with the way search engines work, here’s a quick (not comprehensive) lesson. On you Internet page, at the top, you find an “address” line, type in http://www.google.ca/. This brings you to the “Google” page. On the page you will see a blank square just under the word Google Canada. This is where you type in the name of the festival or event you want to find. (So much for the lesson! If you are still having trouble, give me a call and I will help you get started – 1-800-815-8291) Watch out, though, sometime when you initiate a search, you will see at the top of the search page you will see “Results” of the search. In the case of the “Festival of Trees”, 792,000 site that matched the search criterion! DON’T WORRY, you don’t have to view all these sites! First of all, Google limits the numbers you can actually view. They narrow the search down for you by eliminating a lot of duplication, not all, but a lot. Even with their narrowing it down, there is still a lot to left to see. The problem is that when you type in your key search words, the search engine, Google, searches the entire Internet and selects sites that match the words and combination of words that you have typed. The key is to look at only the first few pages to see if what you are looking for is there. The search lists the best matches at the beginning of the lists. That means that the top 5 or 6 matches are likely the one you should look at first. If it’s not there, try another combination of search words. It’s tricky, but if you work with it for a while you will get the hang of it! Patience is the key. Well designed websites make your search easier because their designers understand how search engines work and develop their web designs to take advantage of the search technology. These websites usually appear on the first search page and are normally in the top 5 to 6 matches. I know this seems like a long winded way of getting festival information, but once you get to understand what you are doing, it will be worth the trouble. So, remember, no matter how daunting the task seems, Mr. GOOGLE is still your best friend when it comes to learning about you favourite (and not so favourite) festivals and events!