Online Journalism Blog

This week the UK government released a report into social mobility. While mainstream reporting focused mainly on the broad picture, I wanted to read the original government report itself. Which publishers linked to it?

• The Telegraph: fail. Not one of the 4 articles I could find linked to the report.
• The Times: fail. Alan Milburn’s own piece about the report fails to link to it. These articles don’t either.
• The Independent: fail, despite having more articles on the issue than other websites.
• The BBC: links very clearly to both a summary (PDF) and the whole report (PDF). Curiously, however, both are hosted on the BBC’s own site.
• Sky: fail. Oh, and an appalling search facility – top result for a search on ‘Milburn Report’? From 2002.
• ITN: fail.
• Reuters: fail.
• Channel 4 News: no link on the video report, but there is a link below a line at the end of this story. You have to scroll to see it. Although it’s labelled as an ‘external link’ the PDFs are hosted on C4’s own site.
• The Guardian: mixed. This article didn’t and nor did this; but this one did – albeit in par 5, three pars after the report is first mentioned. Notably, 2 pieces on their blogging platform Comment is Free did - both in the first paragraph, no less, and to the Cabinet Office version.

I’ve written and spoken extensively on the importance of linking, but it comes down to 2 core reasons:

Firstly, Google will rank a page more highly if it includes more outgoing links.

Secondly, people will return to your site more often if they know they can expect useful links.

So, get your act together, please what are news organisations doing to address this?

Searching is the most popular activity online after email. It is the prism through which we experience a significant proportion of the world’s information – from news and information about our community, through to health information, commerce, and just about anything that has a presence online.

Search Engine Society takes a critical look at search engines, how they work, the techniques used to manipulate them – from gaining better rankings to censorship, and the implications for privacy and democracy. [Read more]

That’s the question bumping around my mind after reading this post at SEObook.com:

“if you are not an AdWords advertiser, are not in universal search verticals (like news and video), and are not wikipedia, then you don’t have many organic search results that you can rank for on the first page.”

The image makes it clearer:

In some ways, blogs are better placed than ordinary websites, as Google may be indexing your blog as part of its news search. But that isn’t particularly comforting. The wider move towards mainstream results that keep you within Google doesn’t look particularly healthy. 

Here’s what SEObook suggests:

• If your site is fairly close to what it takes to be considered in some of Google’s verticals – like Google news, then consider upping your game a bit and submitting an inclusion request.
• Try to make some video content. Not good for everyone, but most sites could use some, and the competitive bar with video is much lower than it is with text – though I wouldn’t expect it to stay that way for more than a couple years.
• If you have some top rankings that are bouncing around consider focusing on promoting that content again – when stratification occurs you are going to be better off focusing on owning a few ideas rather than being average to slightly above average at many. Top ranked sites also benefit from self-reinforcing rankings. Read up on cumulative advantage if you have not yet done so.
• Usage data (and/or brand searches) may become a big part of future algorithms. Get ready for that by reading about BrowseRank then invest in advertising, branding, and user experience.

The only upside? Google may be making itself less relevant, and more open to competition.

In the same week that the BBC’s head of editorial development for multimedia journalism was quoted as saying they must do better at linking to external sites, it’s been revealed that the corporation is using a convoluted linking mechanism which means those sites will be denied any benefit in their Google ranking.

Pete Clifton is quoted as saying “It’s not about people slavishly coming back to the BBC. This is a real change in our view that we feel much more part of the web. [Read more]

Matt Wardman has an interesting post on the Economist having its PageRank cut by Google (translation: Google punishes Economist for unknown transgression by giving its website less importance and therefore, probably, lower ranking).

Here’s what he says: [Read more]

If you read the final part of my model for the 21st century newsroom concerning new media business models, I strongly recommend ‘Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business‘, an article by Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. Have you not clicked yet? Here are some quotes to persuade you:

“To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties â€" buyers and sellers â€" to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash.

“… There are dozens of ways that media companies make money around free content, from selling information about consumers to brand licensing, “value-added” subscriptions, and direct ecommerce (see wired.com/extras for a complete list). Now an entire ecosystem of Web companies is growing up around the same set of models.”

Anderson maps out a ‘Taxonomy of free’ including [Read more]