Where to find Malcolm Coles, reviews, and tips on how to do things I couldn’t do.

malcolm coles


All my posts about: ‘Newspapers’

These are all my blog posts about newspapers with the Guardian, Telegraph, Mail and Express the main subjects. You should check out some of my other tags, such as newspaper paid links and my series looking at newspapers on twitter. I write about all aspects of what newspapers get up to, especially SEO, dodgy reporting, any stats relating to their online use and paywalls (or how they charge).

Page 2

Jan Moir and the PCC: why its website crashed 11

October 19, 2009
Looking for the database on localhost. Not good.

The PCC is supposed to deal with complaints about sensitive matters. To cope with this, it should put in place (1) scaleable web hosting to ensure it can cope with any surge in traffic and (2) top-quality security measures to ensure its backend is secure.

It appears to have done neither.

Read the full post ...

Jan Moir: Twitter forces Mail to pull all adverts 25

October 16, 2009
The holes are where the ads were ...

Update Rachel has commented below that she and others on a Facebook group had been even more proactive and along with others had been phoning the press offices / media buyers of the relevant advertisers. So I’m not sure I should claim too much credit for this …
Original post: Oh my God, we’ve won. I [...]

Read the full post ...

Jan Moir: Mail readers reject her hateful bile (probably) 4

October 16, 2009
Jan Moir: hot (as a search term)

Update According to Google, at 2.45pm, Jan Moir is the 42nd most popular search in the last hour. The Mail must be loving the traffic they are getting. So, why don’t you try contacting the advertisers on that page to let them know what you think of their brand sitting alongside the story? Try retweeting [...]

Read the full post ...

Full details and analysis of Carter Ruck's new attempt to gag Parliament 1

October 15, 2009

Having failed to stop the Guardian reporting an MP asking a question about Trafigura and the injunction concerning the Minton report, Carter Ruck is making a second attempt to gag Parliament.

Read the full post ...

Google Sidewiki, Carter Ruck and the Trafigura injunction 0

October 13, 2009

I wrote a sidewiki about Trafigura. Then i chickened out and deleted it straightaway.

Read the full post ...

Rate of growth slows for newspaper Twitter accounts 1

October 05, 2009

National UK newspapers had 1,665,202 followers of their Twitter accounts at the start of October – an increase of 193,266 on September 1st (when they had 1,471,936).

The rate of growth has slowed, however. This is a monthly increase of 13.1%, compared with 17% from August 1 to September 1, and also from July 1 to August 1.

Read the full post ...

Cervical cancer vaccine: Please - here's how YOU can help us inject some sense into Google's results 10

October 01, 2009

I’ve pointed out that any concerned parents searching Google for information on the cervical cancer jab (in the tragic wake of a schoolgirl’s death) see a mass of negative and inaccurate information about the vaccine linking the girl’s death to the vaccine.

It turns out she died of an unrelated tumour. However, the results are likely to give parents second thoughts about allowing their daughters to be caccinated, even though the injection will save hundreds of lives a year.
YOU can help do something about this.

Read the full post ...

Papers continue shameful coverage of vaccination death 4

September 30, 2009

I posted yesterday about the shameful reporting of the tragic death of a girl who died on the same day as getting the cervical cancer vaccine – and how, without any evidence of a link, the papers were giving the impression that the vaccine, which will save hundreds of lives a year, is unsafe.

So, how are the papers covering the news that, as the BBC news site puts it in its 3rd most important story “Cancer jab ‘unlikely’ death cause: A girl who died shortly after being given a cervical cancer vaccine had a ’serious underlying medical condition’, an NHS Trust says”?

Read the full post ...

Cervical cancer jab: how the newspapers have learned nothing from MMR 3

September 29, 2009
Headline on Mail

The UK media have learned nothing from the debacle over the MMR vaccine – where they relentlessly covered stories doubting the safety of MMR, putting the lives of children at risk.
They are continuing their habit of undermining public-health initiatives with their latest scare story about the safety of the cervical cancer jab, after the tragic [...]

Read the full post ...

Google Sidewiki: the abuse of UK newspapers begins 5

September 24, 2009
The first sidewiki entry on the Mail homepage

I just tweeted that I was finding it hard to resist the temptation to be the first to sidewiki the home page of UK newspapers. (Sidewiki is Google’s new way to let you see what other users have said about a page while you look at it).

It looks like I’m too late as the Mail already has been sidewikied as this picture shows.

Read the full post ...

Truncating text: more weird Express descriptions 0

September 21, 2009
Australians find £5. That

I wasn’t going to carry on giving examples of the Express truncating story descriptions. But SARitchie and SharkSEO sent me some more … so here are some more from today.

Read the full post ...

Don't auto-truncate text to create snippets - part 2 2

September 20, 2009
Owen: nail biting man?

The other day I advised not to truncate text automatically when describing pages on your navigation pages, after the Express reported public sector borrowing at £16.1. They’ve done it again with the report of Man U’s victory over Man City, which is described thus: “Manchester United have brought home victory after a nail-biting Man”.

Read the full post ...

Don't automatically truncate text like the Express does 0

September 18, 2009
The billion has been sliced off automatically

The Express’s home-page template truncates the introductory copy of each featured story if it’s too long. I’d been hoping that this would lead to a hilariously rude half-sentence one day. This has never happened. So I’m reduced to using this example.

Read the full post ...

SEOing Patrick Swayze's and Keith Floyd's death 1

September 15, 2009
Two virtually identical stories

Patrick Swayze has died. So has Keith Floyd.

So no surprise that UK newspapers are rushing to publish as many news stories as they can on the subject to try to appear multiple times in the news and web search results, even if some of the pages are very similar.

Read the full post ...

Mirror starts to remove MoneyExtra links 13

September 14, 2009
Before: with links to MoneyExtra

The Mirror has removed some of the links to MoneyExtra that I recently warned looked like paid-for links added for SEO reasons (which would put them in breach of Google’s guidelines).

Of the 11 pages I pointed out: 5 contained links to the MoneyExtra credit card page – 4 have had the MoneyExtra links removed …

Read the full post ...

Unexplained phenomenon: Telegraph pips Guardian and Mail to SEO victory 2

September 06, 2009
Google UFO logo

Google’s logo over the weekend showed one of its Os being abducted by aliens, triggering an SEO scrap among UK newspapers, which the Telegraph won.

Read the full post ...

UK newspaper twitter followers up 17% from August to September 2

September 02, 2009

National UK newspaper accounts had 1,471,936 followers at the start of September, an increase of 213,892 or 17% on August 1 (when they had 1,258,044 followers).

You can see the September figures in the table.

Read the full post ...

The (in)accuracy of Alexa: more evidence not to rely on it 0

September 02, 2009
Drew Broomhall

I’m giving up comparing websites using Alexa.com’s data. Checking the accuracy of Alexa data using ABCe numbers led me to believe they were good enough to rely on. But the Times reckons the Alexa numbers in my latest post relating to referrals from the BBC were rubbish – and the Guardian agrees.

Read the full post ...

Hey, James Murdoch: How about thanking the BBC for all your traffic? 1

September 01, 2009

Instead of lambasting the BBC for the “chilling” effect of its online activities, and blaming the problems of online news sites on the BBC “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market”, News Corp chief James Murdoch should thank the BBC for all the traffic it sends his way.

The BBC is responsible for about 870,000 visitors a month to Times Online and 1.1 million to thesun.co.uk (see methodology, below).

Read the full post ...

Guardian has the most bookmarks on Delicious 2

August 26, 2009

The Guardian has more bookmarks on Delicious than any other UK newspaper according to Quarkbase. There are nearly 11,000 bookmarks for the Guardian, with the Times in 2nd (3,944) and the Independent 3rd (3,196).

Read the full post ...


↑ Top