August 17, 2010

I pointed out last week how awful Google Trends UK was – because it was full of American results. In some good news, Yahoo’s trending list seems a lot better (although it doesn’t give much in the way of explanation of how it’s put together).
Tags: google, yahoo
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August 13, 2010

Fresh from pointing out the problems with Google’s keywords tool, here’s why they need to sort out the list of hot UK search topics in Google Trends. Here’s the top 10 at 5pm on Friday (surely the best time to blog, no?).
gm ipo – an American company is selling shares.
elias abuelazam – a Michigan, America, [...]
Tags: google, seo
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July 21, 2010

There was a curious end to yesterday’s Dragon’s Den when Evan Davis turned to the camera and said: “Why not tell us what you think of today’s programme by joining the conversation on Twitter.”
But then, although someone is clearly running the account, they haven’t actually replied to anyone’s tweets. Odd.
Tags: bbc
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July 14, 2010

Google has a series of things it will tell you if you search for them, such as how many horns a unicorn has. More usefully, it can tell you stuff like how many metres are in a yard or when sunrise is in London.
It also seems willing to try to tell you celebrities’ dating status, although it appears to be quite rubbish at it …
Tags: google
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June 29, 2010
The Guardian has poked some fun at the Edinburgh Fringe website for banning people linking to it in its terms and conditions. Can this still be going on, more than a year after I revealed that most newspapers banned deep links, as did brands like Apple, Royal Mail, Channel 4 and, er, the Association of Online Publishers (which culminated in the hilarity of my attempts to get the Royal Mail to post me the paper licence they insisted I needed to link to them)?
Here are some more sites that still think they can – or should – ban people linking to them. YOU ARE ALL CLOWNS.
Tags: links, seo
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June 27, 2010

Lovechips.co.uk: It lies about the nutritional value of potatoes. The people who commissioned it don’t know or care that it’s rubbish. But shutting it down won’t save us a penny, even though the government claims it will.
Tags: reviews, seo
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June 25, 2010

Channel 4 is keyword stuffing the Title of its Big Brother homepage:
Home – Big Brother – Channel4.com – Big Brother, bigbrother, BB, BB11, 4oD, Live Stream, Live Streaming, Live Feed, Channel 4, Channel4, C4, housemates, house, Ben, Caoimhe, Corin, David, Govan, Ife, John James, Josie, Mario, Nathan, Rachael, Shabby, Steve, Sunshine
Tags: google, seo
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May 19, 2010

Bing says xRank is “an insightful ranking formula that tells you who the world is searching for most. The result is a cultural snapshot of who’s hot and who’s not!”
Er, no. It currently thinks Ash is the hottest band around right now because people are searching for volcanos.
Tags: bing
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May 10, 2010

Mobile versions of websites – what a train crash they often are. As I write this, at 10.30pm on Monday night, neither the BBC nor Guardian mobile websites are mentioning that Gordon Brown has promised to resign … a story that their web news pages are unsurprising leading with – and have been doing so for several hours.
Tags: bbc, Guardian, itv
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April 30, 2010

I’m not quite sure why the Sun runs Sun Vote as it just ignores it (EG when its readers aren’t that fussed over a hung parliament). But its own on-site poll from last night about who won the debate (and unlike other sites, these aren’t easy polls to vote in – you have to go through a lengthy sign-up process) reveals that Clegg won.
Tags: Sun
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April 19, 2010

The News of the World has trumpeted a poll of mums claiming Cameron is “storming” into the lead. The figures show the opposite of this – read my dissection of the stats over at The Media Blog.
Tags: news of the world, surveys
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April 13, 2010

As with their party leaders’ websites, the parties’ online approaches to their manifestos leave a lot to be desired – although Labour has a clear victory over the Conservatives.
Tags: google, seo
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April 09, 2010
I’ve reviewed the online presence of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg over at econsultancy. Why not take a look?
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March 23, 2010

Google’s planning an online property portal. For now, it seems to be attempting to soften up the market by suggesting estate agents belong inside – as this search for “Estate agents in Islington” showed …
Tags: google, seo
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March 23, 2010

Following on from yesterday’s Cash Gordon debacle, the site is now live again. I thought I’d offer some SEO tips as they seem to be floundering about the place .
Tags: Cash Gordon, seo
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March 22, 2010

You’d have thought people would realise the folly of unmoderated hashtag-based twitter streams by now (see Skittles etc). But not the Conservatives. Their new Cash Gordon site displays the latest tweets using the #cashgordon tag – with no filtering or moderation, as these screenshots show.
Tags: Cash Gordon
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March 12, 2010

Facebook claims that it “maintains a robust reporting infrastructure that leverages our hundreds of millions of users to look for offensive or potentially dangerous content.”
But I’ve discovered that this is rubbish. Its methods for reporting inappropriate content are confusing, flawed or missing.
Tags: facebook
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March 09, 2010
I can think of a way to save the Royal Mail some money – abolish their mad scheme for controlling who links to them – which involves being posted a paper licence to do so.
This is the saga of my trying to link to the Royal Mail site.
Tags: royal mail
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March 09, 2010

eHow says Acai Berries are wonderful – eat them. Although it also says they have no benefits.
Tags: ehow
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March 04, 2010

People are often complaining that they want to log into two Gmail accounts at once (the answer is to use two browsers, or Chrome in incognito mode). I seem to now be logged into two accounts at once – even though I don’t want to be – potentially exposing someone else’s details.
Tags: google
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