01
Naming, descriptions and getting an event page found before entries close.
1 published
Notes from the people indexing combat sports.
Search data, event operations and the engineering behind SportsBracket. Written for organisers, coaches and the occasional developer.
Six areas
What this blog covers
Proposed expansion — one area per thing you actually spend time on.
02
Weigh-ins, mat schedules, volunteers, budget — the operational side of a competition.
0 published · 2 planned
03
Repechage, round robin, Swiss: what each format does to your timetable.
0 published · 1 planned
04
For coaches and clubs: picking the right competitions, travel and deadlines.
0 published · 1 planned
05
Scraping federation calendars, deduplicating events, keeping data honest.
0 published · 2 planned
06
Monthly column: what search data says about combat-sports events.
0 published · 1 planned
The archive
1 published · 7 plannedFilter the archive by area
How to name your competition so it ranks on Google, fast
Real query data from thousands of events, and the naming pattern that gets a new page onto page one.
What 40,000 searches say about entry deadlines
Search interest peaks nine days before entries close. Most organisers publish far too late.
How long will your tournament actually take?
Mat count, match duration and the arithmetic that decides whether you finish before the hall closes.
Repechage, round robin or Swiss — pick by timetable
Every format is a trade between fairness and hours. A side-by-side on real entry numbers.
Deduplicating the same competition from five sources
Federations, Smoothcomp, JudoManager and two club sites all announce one event. Here's the matching logic.
Building a season a club can afford
Travel cost per athlete, ranking points per trip, and how to say no to the rest.
The volunteer roster that survives contact with reality
Roles, hand-offs and the two positions nobody remembers to fill.
Indexing 3,491 events without a single manual entry
What we crawl daily, what we refuse to guess, and how a listing gets into Google in about a day.
The data desk
A recurring column, straight from Search Console.
Every month: what people searched for, which competitions got found, and what the data says organisers should change. No opinions we can't back with a query.
This chart is not wired to Search Console yet. The percentages are examples, and the first live export replaces them.
Example figures — not Search Console data yet
query shapeshare of clicks
name + city + year61%
name + "registration"18%
sport + city14%
generic head terms7%
Partner placement · 22stayaffiliate — we earn a commission
22stay
A bed near the mat, booked in a minute.
We use 22stay for accommodation on every event page, and the booking helps keep this blog and the event index free.
We earn a commission on bookings made through 22stay — at no extra cost to you.
no extra cost to youfree cancellation options
example search
CityZagreb, HR
DatesFri–Sun
Guests2 · 1 room
22stay booking link — coming soon
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