YaDig’s 2012 Growth Spurt: Whopping Traffic, Facebook Explosion, New Blog & more…

Whew! The first quarter of 2012 has probably been the busiest and most exciting time at YaDig headquarters so far: we rolled out YaDig’s new and best ever site version yet; we upped our Love on social networks and are focusing on search engines more precisely. We also launched a new and improved blog under our own domain (you're reading it now :) ) and while we were busy doing all this stuff, we were also aggressively marketing the site to people in the UAE. Just as our staff’s sweat starts to dry a little, we’re already seeing the hard work paying off. Let us take you to a brief tour of our very recent achievements. 

Recent Press

YaDig was featured in a recent article about the The Top Digital Companies in the Middle East and we're flattered to be hovering around such huge names. The truth is however, we have only just begun and 2012 is our year as we roll out products and features that will make for the most fun, competitive and rewarding online experience around.

Whopping Traffic

At the end of January we were still under 150,000 PageViews a month. Now if you're not in digital business that means “hits” more or less. Well as of yesterday we were over 600,000 PVs  and 80% of the entire traffic is now coming from the UAE with heavy numbers from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. The numbers of our registered users have also skyrocketed, growing massively since the launch of our new build only two months ago. As we educate more people on how to use this social tool to engage with businesses, the word is obviously spreading! If you have a really good, or really bad experience out you should go directly to YaDig to tell your friends.

Facebook Explosion

Did you know we’re about to reach a total of 80,000 followers for our Facebook Fan pages? Our most popular  pages include YaDig UAE with 12,000 followers, YaDig ME with 8,000, YaDig India with 23,000, and YaDig Egypt with 20,000 followers. These numbers are as of today and there’s no stopping the ongoing explosion. We keep our followers updated about the hottest businesses in town via Facebook pages and users dig us for who doesn’t love pleasant surprises!

Competition #1 Ending 

Our first ever Review Writing Competition ends this week and will see us picking 20 winners in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Sharjah both at random and a few prizes for best reviews/opinions. There is still time to get involved and write a review or two at this link: www.yadig.com/Competition.aspx

What YaDig Means to the Middle East

With its launch in 2010, YaDig introduced the concept of a social review website in the Middle East. Previously, the region had lacked an online utility that allowed its people to find great places to go, talk about business establishments, voice personal opinions, and keep in touch with friends, all from one platform. YaDig has been trying to fix that problem and we feel we’re making strides these days as traffic hits all time highs. Do you dig us?

In less than two years, YaDig’s Middle East user base has exploded from a few hundred to tens of thousands today, and the numbers are only increasing. Today actually we hit the 300,000 pageview per month mark and have grown over 25% since last month.The love YaDig has received so far from the UAE community (50% of our traffic right now) has been reciprocated with continuous enrichment in the site’s database for this region; thousands of new places in different categories are added every week for different Middle Eastern locations so the locals get more out of their favorite site. We have lots more cool stuff coming too so keep YaDiging!

More Places for More Users

YaDig started off with just five categories that included hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, night clubs and bars. But knowing the initial five categories covered only a fraction of places that people go in their lives, the guys/girls introduced many new categories later that encompassed virtually all possible venues a person is expected to visit in his or her lifetime.

The inclusion of such important categories as automotive services, beauty & spa, education, home services, medical & health, and sports & leisure among others has made YaDig.com an even cooler tool that people can use all the time in their everyday lives. Today YaDig stands proud as the Middle East’s easiest place to find the info you need and even with a sprinkle of user opinions too!

A Better Service for Better Decisions

YaDig was made with just one goal in mind: to help people make informed choices and land the right places to have awesome times at. People extensively use YaDig’s location based business review service to find the right place to go to have a certain need met. Looking for good Italian food nearby? Browse YaDig listing from wherever you are and get customized local results in an instant. Still not sure? Use ‘Ask Advice’ to ask the locals about what’s the best place for you to go.

That’s the simple and effective way YaDig is helping the people in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and around the region make informed choices and save themselves the time, trouble, and disappointment of landing another wrong place. But that’s not the end of it. Engineers at YaDig labs are continuously working to innovate new ways of making the site more useful for the end user, so let’s just say that calling the Middle East chapter of YaDig’s success story only a positive beginning would be no exaggeration.

What YaDig Envisions

From day one the YaDig team was convinced of the potential of a Middle East centric social review service. The growth YaDig saw in the region in just a matter of months made them think about taking more serious steps towards optimizing the untapped online potential of such important countries of the region as the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait and more.

Today the above mentioned locations grace YaDig’s priority list and the focus is paying off in the shape of more users and increased activity. YaDig’s dedicated data miners for the Middle East region are updating the site’s database incessantly to make it a better service for the local users. More interestingly, YaDig is getting in touch with the local businesses to offer special discounts and deals on the site for the local YaDig users to benefit from. This proposition – that’s already started to take shape – is all set to evolve into an ecosystem that not only helps people make informed choices, but also rewards them for playing their part in its growth.