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This year marked the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and those who watch Tahoe closely say this tourist destination has greatly benefitted from the technology that gave birth to more than a billion Web pages.
From ski resort condition reports to tourism Web sites, to newspapers and other publications, Web sites are increasingly a source of information here.
"It's huge for our industry. It makes the tourism industry a world-wide marketplace now," said Patrick Kaler, executive director of the Lake Tahoe Visitor's Authority.
Over half of Tahoe's tourism is generated over the Web, said Brian Williams, founder of Media West, an online marketing and Internet development company in Stateline that designed several of Tahoe's popular Web sites.
Traffic on Tahoe's ski resort Web sites has boomed 500 percent to 800 percent from summertime, according to Alexa.com, a partner of Google that tracks Web site visitor numbers.
Heavenly Mountain Resort's Web site, www.skiheavenly.com, was the busiest Tahoe site on Thursday, ranking 33,257th out of more than a billion Web pages on Alexa.com.
"The way we treat the Internet is that it's not the way of the future, it's the way," said Heavenly spokesman Russ Pecoraro. Their online marketing department has only two people, but they pack a hefty punch.
"We've completely redesigned the site in the last year, based on user feedback and surveys to make it a more user-friendly environment," he said.
Newspaper sites are also among the busiest Tahoe Web pages. This newspaper's site, www.TahoeDailyTribune.com, receives about 40,000 unique visitors a month, while the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza at www.TahoeBonanza.com receives 20,000 each month, according to Web manager Kirk Caraway.
The Internet plays a key role in attracting "destination" travelers who will possibly fly in from far away, stay longer and spend more, Kaler said.
"The type of visitor that we are attracting to Tahoe is completely different than five years ago," he said. "We are getting fewer visitors, but they are spending more money."
Surveys have shown 46 percent of Americans want to visit Tahoe, Kaler said.
"We need to have that presence on the Internet when it comes to searching," he said.
And sometimes that's all in a name.
Owning the name "Tahoe" as a Web address has been a huge advantage, said Paul Middlebrook, former publisher of the Tahoe Daily Tribune and now general manager of Tahoe.com and Reno.com.
Tahoe.com was Tahoe's first Web site, starting in March 1994.
While it jockeys with several other sites for the top spot in terms of visitor numbers, it is consistently the top result under Google, which uses a variety of factors to list sites.
And being one of the top three spots under Google means more than 70 percent of visitors will click on you, according to this week's edition of Newsweek.
"If you are the first thing they see, that's what they are going to click on," Middlebrook said. Tahoe.com is a company under Sierra Nevada Media Group, which also owns the Tribune.
Business owner Andrea Benson realized Tahoe also needs to provide visitors with Internet access while they are here, so she and her partner Adam Wexelblatt started Tahoe Business and Cyber Center in the Heavenly Village early this year.
Many of her clients are businessmen from the Bay Area.
"They are usually in culture shock if they can't get on the Internet easily and inexpensively," Benson said of her business clients.
The center provides monthly passes and allows people to bring in food and drinks from neighboring coffee houses. It's a big lure for overseas ski resort workers.
Internet cafes took off in Europe much earlier than in American, she said.
"They come over here and are just amazed at how hard it is to find a cyber cafe," she said.
Googling Tahoe
If you Google "Lake Tahoe" you get 11 million results. Here were the top 10 in a search Thursday:
1. Tahoe.com
2. VirtualTahoe.com
3. SkiHeavenly.com
4. SkiLakeTahoe.com
5. Tahoeinfo.com
6. Tahoefun.org
7. Tahoecam.com
8. Tahoe.usgs.gov
9. Ltcc.edu
10. LakeTahoeMarathon.com
Here is a snapshot of the busiest Tahoe sites on Thursday, according to Alexa.com, a partner of Amazon.com that tracks users of Internet sites.
Heavenly Mountain Resort's Web site on Thursday was the 33,257th most popular site, out of more than a billion Web pages in existence. Rankings and user numbers change daily.
Virtual Tahoe: visitor information
www.virtualtahoe.com
Traffic rank: 39,188
Links: 221
Kirkwood
www.kirkwood.com
Traffic rank: 47,688
Links: 66
Tahoe's best: visitor info
www.tahoesbest.com
Traffic rank: 97,153
Links: 155
Squaw Valley USA
www.squaw.com
Traffic rank: 84,295
Links: 142
Tahoe activities
www.tahoeactivities.com
Traffic rank: 102,875
Links: 25
Sugar Bowl
www.sugarbowl.com
Traffic rank: 112,095
Links: 64
Tahoe.com: visitor info
www.tahoe.com
Traffic rank, 3-month average: 115,371 (Thursday's average not available)
Links: 224
Tahoe Vacation Guide
www.tahoevacationguide.com
Traffic rank: 122,283
Links: 55
Alpine Meadows
www.skialpine.com
Traffic rank: 136,314
Links: 92
Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority
www.bluelaketahoe.com
Rank: 139,309
Links: 33
Heavenly Mountain Resort
www.skiheavenly.com
Traffic rank: 33,257
Links: 143
Mt. Rose
www.mtrose.com
Traffic rank: 152,930
Links: 56
Sierra-at-Tahoe
www.sierraattahoe.com
Traffic rank: 218,193
Links: 8
Tahoe Daily Tribune
www.tahoedailytribune.com
Traffic rank: 235,404
Links: 86
Ski Lake Tahoe
www.skilaketahoe.com
Traffic rank: 238,007
Links: 18
North Lake Tahoe Bonanza
www.tahoebonanza.com
Traffic rank: 274,882
links: 33
More Tahoe sites:
www.tahoeworld.com
www.sierrasun.com
www.tahoethisweek.com
www.tahoefun.org
www.tahoequarterly.com
www.gotahoe.com
www.skinorthstar.com
www.donnerskiranch.com
www.borealski.com
www.tahoecountry.com
www.highsierra.com
www.tahoechamber.org
www.tahoesites.com
www.tahoecelebritygolf.com
www.tahoeconcierge.com
www.tahoeinfo.com
www.visitinglaketahoe.com
www.accesslaketahoe.com
www.trpa.org
www.tahoerimtrail.org
www.tahoecam.com
www.TahoeTrailBars.com
www.laketahoemarathon.com
www.ltcc.edu : Lake Tahoe Community College
http://tahoe.usgs.gov
www.LakeTahoeShakespeare.com
www.LakeTahoeFilmFestival.com
www.SierraAvalancheCenter.org
Blogs or forums
http://powder2thepeople.com/
http://www.telemarktips.com/
www.tahoeblog.com
World Wide Web timeline
1969: The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency launches the first packet-switching computer network. The concept of the Internet is developed by the U.S. government.
1980: Software engineer Tim Berners-Lee writes program that is a precursor to World Wide Web. It is a series of crude pages and numbered links.
1990: Berners-Lee publicly launches the World Wide Web, a user-friendly, multimedia part of the Internet. With Berners-Lee's "http protocol," computer users are able to navigate with the click of a mouse.
1992: Librarian Jean Armour Polly coins the term "surfing the Internet."
1993: Mosaic, the browser that would eventually become Netscape is created. White House launches own Web site, whitehouse.gov.
1994: America Online debuts.
1995: Yahoo, Amazon, eBay debut. Netscape goes public at $28 a share. By the end of the year, Netscape sells for more than $150 a share, hence starting the IPO mania of the 1990s.
1997: The Communications Decency Act becomes law, prohibiting the transmission of obscene or indecent materials across the Web. The Supreme Court strikes it down in 1997.
1998: Online journalist Matt Drudge breaks the Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal. Google.com launches.
1999: The IRS introduces a payment option for taxpayers to file and pay their taxes online. Music sharing service Napster.come begins.
2000: America Online and Time Warner merge. NASDAQ has its best year with record high at 5,048 on March 10. Stock prices plummeted after that.
2001: July 2. Facing lawsuits from the recording industry, Napster site shuts down.
2002: T-Mobile offers wireless "Sidekick" cell phone with Internet access. AT&T, IBM and Intel get into the Wi-Fi business, creating wireless access at hotels, airports and stores.
2003: Recording industry files 261 suits against everyone from 5-year-olds to grandparents who they claimed illegally downloaded and distributed copyrighted music.
2004: The CAN-SPAM Act which makes it a criminal offense to send unsolicited junk e-mail.
2005: The following year, a man and a woman are convicted of sending spam. The man is sentenced to nine years in prison, and the woman is ordered to pay a $7,500.
Source: cnn.com
From ski resort condition reports to tourism Web sites, to newspapers and other publications, Web sites are increasingly a source of information here.
"It's huge for our industry. It makes the tourism industry a world-wide marketplace now," said Patrick Kaler, executive director of the Lake Tahoe Visitor's Authority.
Over half of Tahoe's tourism is generated over the Web, said Brian Williams, founder of Media West, an online marketing and Internet development company in Stateline that designed several of Tahoe's popular Web sites.
Traffic on Tahoe's ski resort Web sites has boomed 500 percent to 800 percent from summertime, according to Alexa.com, a partner of Google that tracks Web site visitor numbers.
Heavenly Mountain Resort's Web site, www.skiheavenly.com, was the busiest Tahoe site on Thursday, ranking 33,257th out of more than a billion Web pages on Alexa.com.
"The way we treat the Internet is that it's not the way of the future, it's the way," said Heavenly spokesman Russ Pecoraro. Their online marketing department has only two people, but they pack a hefty punch.
"We've completely redesigned the site in the last year, based on user feedback and surveys to make it a more user-friendly environment," he said.
Newspaper sites are also among the busiest Tahoe Web pages. This newspaper's site, www.TahoeDailyTribune.com, receives about 40,000 unique visitors a month, while the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza at www.TahoeBonanza.com receives 20,000 each month, according to Web manager Kirk Caraway.
The Internet plays a key role in attracting "destination" travelers who will possibly fly in from far away, stay longer and spend more, Kaler said.
"The type of visitor that we are attracting to Tahoe is completely different than five years ago," he said. "We are getting fewer visitors, but they are spending more money."
Surveys have shown 46 percent of Americans want to visit Tahoe, Kaler said.
"We need to have that presence on the Internet when it comes to searching," he said.
And sometimes that's all in a name.
Owning the name "Tahoe" as a Web address has been a huge advantage, said Paul Middlebrook, former publisher of the Tahoe Daily Tribune and now general manager of Tahoe.com and Reno.com.
Tahoe.com was Tahoe's first Web site, starting in March 1994.
While it jockeys with several other sites for the top spot in terms of visitor numbers, it is consistently the top result under Google, which uses a variety of factors to list sites.
And being one of the top three spots under Google means more than 70 percent of visitors will click on you, according to this week's edition of Newsweek.
"If you are the first thing they see, that's what they are going to click on," Middlebrook said. Tahoe.com is a company under Sierra Nevada Media Group, which also owns the Tribune.
Business owner Andrea Benson realized Tahoe also needs to provide visitors with Internet access while they are here, so she and her partner Adam Wexelblatt started Tahoe Business and Cyber Center in the Heavenly Village early this year.
Many of her clients are businessmen from the Bay Area.
"They are usually in culture shock if they can't get on the Internet easily and inexpensively," Benson said of her business clients.
The center provides monthly passes and allows people to bring in food and drinks from neighboring coffee houses. It's a big lure for overseas ski resort workers.
Internet cafes took off in Europe much earlier than in American, she said.
"They come over here and are just amazed at how hard it is to find a cyber cafe," she said.
Googling Tahoe
If you Google "Lake Tahoe" you get 11 million results. Here were the top 10 in a search Thursday:
1. Tahoe.com
2. VirtualTahoe.com
3. SkiHeavenly.com
4. SkiLakeTahoe.com
5. Tahoeinfo.com
6. Tahoefun.org
7. Tahoecam.com
8. Tahoe.usgs.gov
9. Ltcc.edu
10. LakeTahoeMarathon.com
Here is a snapshot of the busiest Tahoe sites on Thursday, according to Alexa.com, a partner of Amazon.com that tracks users of Internet sites.
Heavenly Mountain Resort's Web site on Thursday was the 33,257th most popular site, out of more than a billion Web pages in existence. Rankings and user numbers change daily.
Virtual Tahoe: visitor information
www.virtualtahoe.com
Traffic rank: 39,188
Links: 221
Kirkwood
www.kirkwood.com
Traffic rank: 47,688
Links: 66
Tahoe's best: visitor info
www.tahoesbest.com
Traffic rank: 97,153
Links: 155
Squaw Valley USA
www.squaw.com
Traffic rank: 84,295
Links: 142
Tahoe activities
www.tahoeactivities.com
Traffic rank: 102,875
Links: 25
Sugar Bowl
www.sugarbowl.com
Traffic rank: 112,095
Links: 64
Tahoe.com: visitor info
www.tahoe.com
Traffic rank, 3-month average: 115,371 (Thursday's average not available)
Links: 224
Tahoe Vacation Guide
www.tahoevacationguide.com
Traffic rank: 122,283
Links: 55
Alpine Meadows
www.skialpine.com
Traffic rank: 136,314
Links: 92
Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority
www.bluelaketahoe.com
Rank: 139,309
Links: 33
Heavenly Mountain Resort
www.skiheavenly.com
Traffic rank: 33,257
Links: 143
Mt. Rose
www.mtrose.com
Traffic rank: 152,930
Links: 56
Sierra-at-Tahoe
www.sierraattahoe.com
Traffic rank: 218,193
Links: 8
Tahoe Daily Tribune
www.tahoedailytribune.com
Traffic rank: 235,404
Links: 86
Ski Lake Tahoe
www.skilaketahoe.com
Traffic rank: 238,007
Links: 18
North Lake Tahoe Bonanza
www.tahoebonanza.com
Traffic rank: 274,882
links: 33
More Tahoe sites:
www.tahoeworld.com
www.sierrasun.com
www.tahoethisweek.com
www.tahoefun.org
www.tahoequarterly.com
www.gotahoe.com
www.skinorthstar.com
www.donnerskiranch.com
www.borealski.com
www.tahoecountry.com
www.highsierra.com
www.tahoechamber.org
www.tahoesites.com
www.tahoecelebritygolf.com
www.tahoeconcierge.com
www.tahoeinfo.com
www.visitinglaketahoe.com
www.accesslaketahoe.com
www.trpa.org
www.tahoerimtrail.org
www.tahoecam.com
www.TahoeTrailBars.com
www.laketahoemarathon.com
www.ltcc.edu : Lake Tahoe Community College
http://tahoe.usgs.gov
www.LakeTahoeShakespeare.com
www.LakeTahoeFilmFestival.com
www.SierraAvalancheCenter.org
Blogs or forums
http://powder2thepeople.com/
http://www.telemarktips.com/
www.tahoeblog.com
World Wide Web timeline
1969: The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency launches the first packet-switching computer network. The concept of the Internet is developed by the U.S. government.
1980: Software engineer Tim Berners-Lee writes program that is a precursor to World Wide Web. It is a series of crude pages and numbered links.
1990: Berners-Lee publicly launches the World Wide Web, a user-friendly, multimedia part of the Internet. With Berners-Lee's "http protocol," computer users are able to navigate with the click of a mouse.
1992: Librarian Jean Armour Polly coins the term "surfing the Internet."
1993: Mosaic, the browser that would eventually become Netscape is created. White House launches own Web site, whitehouse.gov.
1994: America Online debuts.
1995: Yahoo, Amazon, eBay debut. Netscape goes public at $28 a share. By the end of the year, Netscape sells for more than $150 a share, hence starting the IPO mania of the 1990s.
1997: The Communications Decency Act becomes law, prohibiting the transmission of obscene or indecent materials across the Web. The Supreme Court strikes it down in 1997.
1998: Online journalist Matt Drudge breaks the Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal. Google.com launches.
1999: The IRS introduces a payment option for taxpayers to file and pay their taxes online. Music sharing service Napster.come begins.
2000: America Online and Time Warner merge. NASDAQ has its best year with record high at 5,048 on March 10. Stock prices plummeted after that.
2001: July 2. Facing lawsuits from the recording industry, Napster site shuts down.
2002: T-Mobile offers wireless "Sidekick" cell phone with Internet access. AT&T, IBM and Intel get into the Wi-Fi business, creating wireless access at hotels, airports and stores.
2003: Recording industry files 261 suits against everyone from 5-year-olds to grandparents who they claimed illegally downloaded and distributed copyrighted music.
2004: The CAN-SPAM Act which makes it a criminal offense to send unsolicited junk e-mail.
2005: The following year, a man and a woman are convicted of sending spam. The man is sentenced to nine years in prison, and the woman is ordered to pay a $7,500.
Source: cnn.com
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