Want a job as SEO manager at the Daily Mail? Check out their robots.txt file (just don’t tell them you saw it here …) in the middle it says:
# August 12th, MailOnline are looking for a talented SEO Manager so if you found this then you’re the kind of techie we need!
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iDosing is the made up internet craze where teenagers download digital drugs in the form of MP3 sound files and get high. Or something. I’m not making it up – the Sun and the Mail have reported it. The Mail got there first by an hour or so.
Now compare and contrast the reporting …
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Since the first TV election debate, Nick Clegg has started to be taken seriously by the newspapers (or else has been the victim of a series of hatchet jobs, depending on your point of view).
The charts how the number of stories about Nick Clegg has soared in The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Guardian – even allowing for the fact general election is on.
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Adam Sherk recently pointed out that Twitter drives less than 1% of traffic to US newspaper and magazine sites (but noted that this still makes it “a top 25 referrer for all the [10 sites he asked] and top 10 referrers for most”).
Trying my luck somewhat, I asked people from the three largest UK newspaper sites (the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Guardian) what their figures were.
* For the Mail, under 0.5% of their referrer traffic is from Twitter.
* For the Telegraph, 0.5% of global traffic and 0.25% of uk traffic currently comes from twitter.
* For the Guardian, 0.4% of their page impressions in February came from Twitter.
The Guardian reports that the PCC has rejected all the complaints (more than 25,000) about Jan Moir’s article about Stephen Gately.
As it’s late, I shall limit myself to comparing the reported ruling with the original article …
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John Terry’s been “nobbing” Wayne Bridge’s girlfriend as one of the edits on Wikipedia puts it. Terry got a superinjunction forbidding publication of this story – and of the fact that there was an injunction. This all fell apart on Friday. The case raises some interesting issues:
Despite the superinjunction, you could find out about the [...]
Read the full post ...UK national newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but the rate is getting slower and slower, according to the latest figures for the 129 accounts I’m tracking. November to December growth was just 6.6%, down from 17% earlier in the year.
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As well as the Sun misjudging its readers’ mood over Gordon Brown’s handwritten letter, Daily Mail readers also seem to be sympathetic to the Prime Minister.
The best rated comments on its story are those with sympathy for the PM. The worst rated are mostly criticising him.
Read the full post ...Newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking. October to November growth was just 8.3%.
Read the full post ...June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes, partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories.
Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian first, Telegraph second and Mail third. So what’s changed? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and in September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.
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The furore over Jan Moir has thrown up several interesting SEO issues. Here’s a basic one – how should you link to something you detest?
The problem with linking
Put simply, Google counts a link to a page / website as a vote for that page / website. So everyone who blogged about, and linked to, Jan [...]
There’s a lot to remember when you’re running around in a social media storm, as Jan Moir discovered last week. It would seem that updating meta descriptions isn’t high on the list …
The meta description on the Jan Moir article about Stephen Gately’s death still reads: Our columnist asks why no-one will face up to the sordid reality of the Boyzone star’s demise.
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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 ...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.
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Anyone turning to Google to look into the cervical cancer jab is unlikely to be reassured. Although these results are generated algorithmically, Google’s results are anti-jab. There is very little in the way of balance in the results, with a mixture of old and new scare stories, and only a couple of positive stories.
Read the full post ...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”?
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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 [...]
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.
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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 ...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.
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