Malcolm Coles » malcolm coles

Newspapers, football, sitelinks, and London bias

Malcolm Coles — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:22:53 +0000

Newspapers are accused of ignoring football news outside London or the north-west. And as every Arsenal fan knows, the commentators on Match of the Day are anti Arsenal.

What it there was an independent way to judge websites' football coverage - to analyse who they really favour (and how much thought they've given to the structure of their sites)?

Well there is - google sitelinks. The list of links that google shows under its search results for certain important sites.

Google sitelinks explained

Google says this about sitelinks: "Our algorithms parse the structure and content of websites and identify pages that provide fast navigation and relevant information for the user's query".

In English, they show you links that they think are important or useful to the site in question and to the searcher. They are influenced by the structure of the site itself - so where they appear, they can be used to assess what a site thinks is important ...

Not all sites have them - google hands them out only to sites it considers important enough. So what sitelinks do the newspaperÂ sites have ...?

Mail Online: London and North west bias

Mail sitelinks

The sitelinks shown for the Mail Online when you search for mail online sport are:

Football
Fantasy football
Tottenham
Man City
Man Utd
Rugby
Arsenal
Chelsea.

A clear London and northwest bias. Where are Liverpool though? Not quite sure why Tottenham are there ...

The Times: North west bias

Times sitelinks

Search for Times football, and you see:

Premier League
Liverpool
Scotland
League video highlights
50 worst famous fans no 32
Gerrard's wife confronts burglars
Fink Tank
Alex Ferguson.

The Times is so obsessed by the northwest, Gerrard's wife merits a place, and there's a special link for Alex Ferguson.

Mirror: spreading it around

Mirror sitelinks

Maybe there's a logic to the Mirror's selection that I'm missing when you search for Mirror football.

But they have:

Arsenal
Liverpool
Match reports
Man City
Chelsea
Aston Villa
Everton
Hull CIty.

So they're spreading it around.

The Sun: weird selection

The sun sitelinks

A search for Sun football shows:

Live match centre
Transfer news
England
Tottenham 2 Liverpool 1
Chelsea target Owen
Has Ronaldo met his match.

An eclectic selection - and one that suggests The Sun have some work to do on the structure of their site. What's that old Tottenham report doing there?

Telegraph: London and north west bias

Telegraph sitelinks

Search for telegraph football and you get:

Premier League
Liverpool
Club pages
Paper view
Premier League transfer talk
Arsenal
Fixtures
Tables.

So, london and north-west again, even if only one club from each area.

Guardian gets it right

Guardian sitelinks

The Guardian seems to have a perfectly sensible set of sitelinks, implying they've given some thought to the structure of their site, and actually care about how they look in google.

A search for guardian football reveals:

Matches by date
Fantasy football
Sport
Football weekly
Rumour mill
Fiver
Sport blog
Premier league.

Total mentions

So leaving aside Gerrard and Ferguson, the mentions for each club are:

Liverpool - 4
Arsenal - 3
Chealsea - 3
Tottenahm - 2
Man CityÂ - 2
Man Utd - 1
Aston Villa - 1
Everton - 1
Hull CIty - 1

Who would have thought Hull City would be mentioned as often as Man Utd?

Premier League sitelinks

Premier League love Arsenal and Man Utd

Although if you want proof theÂ Premier League favours Arsenal and Man Utd, look at its site.

Conclusion

Some newspaper sites - the sun and the times in particular - need to look at themselves and wonder if they've really got their site structure right, and are giving out the right impression.

A sitelink to an old football report is not a good use of space in google's results.

The Guardian have the best selection - the other papers should learn from them.

Oh, and clearly there's some sort of anti-Man Utd agenda ... Perhaps being secretly orchestrated from Hull? Or by a burglar in Liverpool.

Meet Ulrika Johnson’s baby: Malcolm

Malcolm Coles — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:00:26 +0000

When I see a new Malcolm, the question is - is he helping Malcolms, or hurting Malcolms?

Malcolm X - he helped us.

That bloke in the Vicks advert whose mum said 'Course you can, Malcolm' - he hurt us.

Ulrika Johnson is probably spelt Jonsson. Anyway, her new baby is Malcolm

Ulrika Johnson's new baby (or is Jonsson's?):

The news that Ulrika Johnson (Jonsson?) had called her baby Malcolm seems neutral.

A celebrity has called their baby 'Malcolm' - that helps us.

That celebrity is the woman who hosted a reality TV where a bachelor had to choose a wife from the contestants - but turned them all down to marry Ulrika. That hurts us.

Kerry Katona: shut up

But Kerry Katona has just weighed in: "Now I like old-fashioned names, but I have to say that Malcolm is not one of my favourites. Itâ€™s quite a nerdy name. Let's hope the other kids arenâ€™t mean to him when he goes to school."

That's Kerry Katona, who, according to Wikipedia, has:

Drug problems
Tabloid exposes
Smoked while pregnant
Was voted second worst celebrity mother
Was voted most irritiating person in Britain
Was voted fourth most hated person in Britain
Was voted most hated woman according to other women.
And who called her own children Maxwell, which is a type of coffee.

And she's worried about other people's kids being mean to their offspring?

LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

Malcolm Coles on the internet

Malcolm Coles — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:13:20 +0000

My own sites

You can see me at:

Company website

My company website is here:

Digital Sparkle

News stories

News stories that feature me include:

I even helped write a Fabian Society pamphlet on the social economy:

Towards a Social Economy

First blog posts

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:44:00 +0000

'When you hear the long beep, followed by the three small beeps, please leave your message.' That was the answering machine message of my friend's mum.

Then there's the instructions on the work voicemail: 'Instruct the caller to leave a detailed message, including their name, phone number and address.' The word 'detailed' really is stressed like that. I'm presuming if anyone leaves a message saying 'It's Bob, call me' then an error message cuts in to say it's not detailed enough and they haven't left their address.

A first post blog carries equivalent danger: 'Hi, this is my blog. After the word comments, please leave a detailed comment, including you name and IP address.' Maybe not. So let's assume you all know what a blog is. If you've come across it before there are any other posts, sorry. Read the 'About this blog' post on the right.