This morning our founder and Executive Director, Maresa Fanelli, was interviewed by Ann Fisher on Central Ohio’s National Public Radio affiliate, WOSU. “All Sides With Ann Fisher” examines topical issues and events in lively and informative interviews with an entertaining style. Listeners participate via telephone, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter to add to the conversations. As always at WOSU, the coverage is fair and balanced with a civil tone.
Each Tuesday, the second hour of Ann’s broadcast is devoted to technology in today’s world. In her “Tech Tuesday” interview, Fanelli discussed the impact of the Google Ad Grant that Pet FBI was awarded.
Since its inception in 1998, Pet FBI has always depended on word of mouth to attract visitors. Fanelli explained the concept of pay-per-click and how the Google Ad Grant enables Pet FBI to come up at the top of online search results. As more people post lost and found pet reports to one single central database, the better the chances of a successful reunion.
For people who have lost pets to connect online with those who have found them, there must be a “critical mass”. Pet FBI has been active in Ohio since 1998, and is well known. About 40% of Ohioans who submit a lost or found pet report eventually update the status to “reunited”. But it has only been two years since Pet FBI went national and scaled up the database, so the success rate nationally is less than 20%. But it is growing every day, and the Google ads are the major factor in that.
Fanelli also explained how petfbi.org works and how it is unique among the many lost and found pet web sites. For one thing users can do a well-defined, targeted search by timeframe and area. Moreover, Pet FBI keeps records for up to five years, unless the user inactivates it, which is a simple procedure. Perhaps most importantly, since Pet FBI is strictly non-commercial and non-profit, we can link to other sources of information online.
The problem with looking for a lost or found pet report online is that information is scattered everywhere. While Facebook and Craigslist are popular venues for posting lost pet reports, it is not possible to do a targeted search on those sites. Most other lost pet sites are for profit and charge a fee. Still, all-volunteer, not for profit Pet FBI has the largest, best designed and easiest to use of all the public lost pet databases online. Now with the Google Ad Grant we are closer to achieving our goal of getting more lost pets back home by consolidating the most information in a single central database.
Here’s a link to a podcast of our 15 minute opening segment on “All Sides With Ann Fisher – Tech Tuesday:
