I'm not sure it gets more embarrassing than this for a news site. In their attempt to be first with the verdict on Amanda Knox, the Mail Online published its pre-written story the moment the ...

Interesting use of different headlines on the Daily Mail today to solve the problem of how to optimise for the high-volume search term "Pippa Middleton's arse".

Here's a few small changes that I would like to see newspapers make in 2011. If you could just get a developer or someone to sort these out, that would be awesome, thanks.

There have been a couple of articles recently (see below) proclaiming the slow death of RSS as a way for users to subscribe to websites. So how do the number of subscribers to newspaper RSS feeds compare?

Here's a table that compares the number of subscribers in Google Reader to each paper's most popular RSS feed 18 months ago and today.

Google's launched a new feature that analyzes reading level scores for websites. Here are the scores for national UK newspapers, plus the overall verdict Google gives on the site's reading level.
There's no right score - ...

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!

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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. ...

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.

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.

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%.

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.

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 ...

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.

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 ...

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.

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.