The Sun is running a despicable campaign against Gordon Brown. But I’ve analysed the comments on its website – and readers disagree with its stance by a ratio of more than 3 to 2 (on top of which, there are now accusations that the Sun is censoring pro-Brown comments).

The paper has exploited the grief of Jacqui Janes over her son Jamie’s death in Afghanistan to attack the PM – because his handwritten letter of condolence was supposedly disrespectful due to sloppy writing and (disputed) spelling errors.

It’s loathsome journalism that ignores the effect of his disability (the PM is blind in one eye).

And it seems Sun readers are mostly on the Prime Minister’s side.

Of the 100+ comments on the story (don’t worry, I’ve nofollowed those links) when I checked, 111 expressed a view for or against Jacqui Janes or Gordon Brown (the rest commented on other issues or corrected people’s spelling errors). Of these:

• 42 were anti Gordon or pro the Sun’s stance.
• 69 were pro Gordon or anti the Sun’s stance.

So that’s more than 60% who don’t agree with the Sun, and less than 40% who do.

Sample comments from those who agree with the Sun’s stance

Some comments from those opposing it

Conclusion

The Sun is channeling this woman’s grief into a personal attack on the Prime Minister.

It’s refusing to make allowances for his disability (maybe we could next attack the war wounded for being workshy benefit scroungers?).

And it’s facilitating her breaking data protection laws by releasing a recording of a private phone call.

The whole thing is sickening – let’s hope that observing its readers’ reactions will lead to an end to this (not that this happened in the Jan Moir case) – and preferably prosecution of the Sun over the data protection offence. What’s more, Daily Mail readers are pro Brown, too. The Sun has got this badly wrong.

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English national newspaper Twitter accounts continue to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking:

• July to August growth: 17%
• August to September growth: 17%
• September to October growth: 13.1%.
• October to November growth: 8.3%

The detail

These 130 accounts had 1,801,811 followers on November 2nd, up by 137,568 from 1,664,243 on October 1. Of that increase, 95,007 (or 69%) was for the @guardiantech account (which benefits from being on Twitter’s suggested user list).

(NB the Telegraph has renamed its @TelegraphScienc account, so this month I’ve restated October’s figures to be for 130 accounts – I thought it had deleted it when I downloaded the latest figures.).

The biggest mover was @MirrorFootball, up 11 places to 81st (from 455 to 809 followers), suggesting the Mirror is finally making some use of Twitter (most of its other accounts are near the bottom – and only appear to have moved up a place due to the demise of the Telegraph’s Science account).

The full spreadsheet is here or you can see the iframe below.

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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.

What’s more, 151,555 of the increase (or 78% of the total) is down to just one account – that of @guardiantech (which owes its popularity to its place on the Twitter Suggested User List). Indeed, of the 131 accounts I’m tracking, 51 have fewer followers than me (@malcolmcoles)!

You can see the full table here, or below (although the iframe isn’t behaving properly, so you’re better off clicking here).

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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 (this is cross-posted from my blog).

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 death of a schoolgirl who had the vaccine the same day.

I’ve given each of the mainstream media an irresponsibility rating below – the Mail and Express are the worst scaremongers, followed by the Mirror and Times.

It’s calculated as follows:

• A headline suggesting a causal link between the vaccine and the girl’s death – there is no evidence of this so far, the two events just occurred on the same day: 20 points
• The use of a photo or words in the headline casting doubt on the safety of the vaccine itself (as opposed to, say, this being a one-off allergic reaction): 20 points
• Calls for the vaccine to be banned: 20 points
• No mention of how many lives the vaccine will save: 20 points.
• Separate comment piece doubting the safety of the vaccine, or emphasis of other stories about vaccine problems: 10 points
• Ill-informed user comments adding to the suggestion of unsafety. 10 points

Daily Mail: 90% irresponsible

Headline: First picture of girl, 14, who died after being injected with cervical cancer jab from ‘rogue batch’

• The headline suggests a causal link. It makes claims of a ‘rogue batch’ in quotes where the only use of those words in the story are the journalist’s own.
• It’s running a poll: “Should the cervical cancer vaccination be suspended”.
• There are a lot of figures about side effects – no mention of actual lives saved.
• The best rated comment is currently “Chemical experiments on our children.” The worst rated is “Many more deaths may occur without the vaccine to guard against HPV.” The comments section is appalling, frankly – full of ill-informed anti-vaccine scaremongering.

Express: 80% irresponsible

Headline: Girl, 14, dies after taking cervical cancer vaccine

• The story, illustrated with a picture of someone being vaccinated, says the death comes after “months of concern over the vaccine”.
• It quotes a “campaign group for safe vaccinations” calling for immediate withdrawal of the vaccine.
• Terrible, irresponsible journalism. I hope the two journalists, Natalie Fahy and Sara Dixon, are ashamed of themselves.

The Mirror: 60% irresponsible

Headline: 14 year old girl dies after cervical cancer jab

• The Mirror’s story is fairly short. The headline suggests a causal link, but the story is fairly balanced although the number of lives saved isn’t given.
• However, the story is described as ‘jab death’ on the Mirror home page. Given we are talking about a young girl’s death, this is tabloidese at its most nauseating.

Independent: 50% irresponsible

Headline: Teenage girl dies after cervical cancer jab

• The headline suggests a causal link, although the story makes clear there isn’t one. It doesn’t say how many lives the vaccine will save, however.
• One of the two user comments (from someone who is clearly deluded about the media’s position) says: “In my opinion vaccinations are NOT benign & injecting our children with 35 different vaccinations before the age of 5 is very foolish. The media are complicit in the ‘vaccinations are perfectly safe’ mantra.”

The Sun: 40% irresponsible

Headline: Girl, 14, dies after cervical cancer jab

• Again, a causal link is suggested by the headline, although the story is fairly balanced, even though it doesn’t mention the number of lives saved.
• The user comments are restrained and even, can I say, thoughtful.

Times: 30% irresponsible

Headline: Schoolgirl dies after being given cervical cancer jab

• The headline suggests a causal link, even though the story makes it clear there isn’t one established. The piece is, however, fairly factual about the benefits and risks.
• However, the story is linked to another case where a girl suffered a mystery illness after the jab, with the mother claiming there is ‘a serious problem with these injections’.
• There is one comment that says: “What is in this vaccine as they never say?? The h1n1 vaccine has squalene and mercury in it FACT !! This causes cancer and brain damage and the government have made the makers immune to prosecution WHY??”. Another comment from a father whose daughter has developed pre-cancerous cells age 14 says “The press are attributing the tragic death of this young girl to the HPV vaccine. Scare mongering and speculation. It is for the coroner to determine the cause of death not Fleet Street. I wouldn’t wish our last year on my worst enemy, so please parents, don’t let this tragic incident cloud your judgement, sign the consent forms.”
• I’ve edited this to make the Times only 30% irresponsible (rather than the original 50%) as it also ran a piece called “Benefits of cervical cancer vaccinations will far outweigh the risks“.

The Guardian: 30% irresponsible

Headline: Schoolgirl dies after cervical cancer vaccination

• Despite this headline, the Guardian story makes it clear that there is no link yet between the vaccine and her death, and points out its benefit.
• However, it has run a separate comment piece claiming ‘confidence will plunge if no answer is found’. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy if the media report the story like this.

Telegraph: 20% irresponsible

Headline: Tributes to 14-year-old schoolgirl who died after being given cervical cancer jab

• The headline suggests a causal link, but otherwise the story is fair and mostly concentrates on reaction to the young girl’s death.

If you’re all appalled by this as me, why not vote in the Daily Mail’s poll to keep the vaccine program going? Or you can follow me on Twitter.

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When news breaks, if you want to do well in Google for relevant searches, publish early, publish often and put your keywords at the front.

From an SEO point of view, the more stories you can pump out targeting different (or even the same) keywords, the more chance you have of appearing at the top of Google’s search results – and scooping up the traffic.

Get it right, and you can appear twice in the web results – and twice in the news results that Google often shows above them for breaking-news-related searches.

Some of the newspapers may have taken this a little bit far with news of Patrick Swayze’s death …

• The Guardian published 15 stories today (Tuesday 15th), all available from its existing Patrick Swayze tag page. Do we really need 15 stories on this?!? About half had a title that began with ‘Patrick Swayze’.
• The Telegraph published 10 pages, and while it doesn’t have as many tag pages as the Guardian, it did feature one of its two obituaries (here and here) as a link from its ‘hot topics’ list on its home page, giving it a boost in Google’s web-result rankings. The screenshot, below, shows that it may have run out of ideas to get to 10 pages – the two bottom ones shown are very similar. Also, nine out of 10 of these stories have a title beginning with ‘Patrick Swayze’. The other is just called ‘Dirty Dancing – time of your life’. Now that is front-loading keywords.
• The Mirror pumped out 5 pages today, and also set up a tag page at some point during the day (they didn’t have one before lunch), hoping to target the searches for ‘patrick swayze’ (yes, they forgot to capitalise it in their haste to set it up). The titles of all 5 begin with ‘Patrick Swazye’.
• The Independent published 4 pages.
• The Times managed just 3 pages – maybe with a paywall coming they are less interested in SEO these days ..
• The Sun published only 2 pages.
• The Mail published just 1 massively long story – on top of its  existing tag page for the actor. Interestingly, the paper recently claimed it wasn’t interested in celeb stories to drive traffic (although I claimed Michael Jackson was behind its June ABCe success).

The papers weren’t all that successful in their SEO efforts.

US sites dominated Google’s results for a search on ‘Patrick Swayze’ and ‘Patrick Swayze death’. The Telegraph did though take the top two web search spots for a search on ‘Patrick Swayze obituary’.

Keith Floyd has also died – and it was a similar story in terms of volume of stories. The Telegraph, for instance, has published 8 stories and the Guardian, via its tag page, published 9. The Guardian pipped the Telegraph to win the results for a search on ‘Keith Floyd obituary’.

If you ever want to target what people are searching for around breaking news, I recently compared the different Google tools for a search on X-factor related terms. And if you want to see SEO taken to the dark side, check out this method of newspapers and paid links.

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National UK newspapers had 1,471,936 Twitter followers at the start of September – up 213,892 or 17% on August 1 (when they had 1,258,044 followers).

You can see the September figures (orignally posted here) below or here.

I have more Twitter statistics here.

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The Guardian has more URLs bookmarked on Delicious than any other UK newspaper, as I first revealed here (with the original video here)

There are 10,914 Guardian URLs bookmarked, with the Times coming 2nd (3,944) and the Independent in 3rd place (3,196).

Quarkbase must be using the Delicious API but it doesn’t say where it gets the number. Click the papers’ name to see the Quarkbase figures (and more).

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Update: Chris Gaither from Google explained how to get removed from Google News while remaining in the main index here and here.

There’s a story in Australia that News Corp. is  preparing to sue Google and Yahoo to stop both from linking to, and quoting News Corp content. It comes as Rupert Murdoch promises to start charging for online content across his company’s news sites.

The suing story has prompted the usual hilarity, with comments such as if murdoch sues google & yahoo over news rather than use robots.txt file, it’ll be a short, embarrassing lawsuit. But here’s why Murdoch might have a case (first posted here) …

Robots.txt isn’t a panacea

The usual response to newspapers’ complaints about Google is to say ‘just use robots.txt to keep them out.’ This was Google’s response in its two fingers to the news industry.

However, most people don’t seem to realise that it’s hard to stay out of Google News and remain in the main Google index:

Please keep in mind that the robot we use for Google News, called Googlebot, is the same robot that we use for Google Web Search. This means that any settings you modify for Google News will also apply to Google Web Search. (From Google Support)

There’s a difference between Google News and Google Search

Google search is a way for a user to enter a term and for Google to show relevant pages. Google News these days looks like a fully fledged news aggregation service – check out its front page, and tell me how much that differs from a publisher’s news home page?

Just because publishers are happy to appear in normal search results, doesn’t mean they want their content used for free to create a rival news source/product. But there’s no way to use robots.txt – google’s supposed answer – to draw this distinction.

Google is ignoring ACAP

Publishers have attempted to help Google out with their own protocol called Automated Content Access Protocol – a way to build on robots.txt and allow better control over how their content is used.

Google won’t implement it saying that: “Our guiding principle is that whatever technical standards we introduce must work for the whole web (big publishers and small), not just for one subset or field”.

But Google already draws a distinction between big and small publishers. I publish a blog, but I’m not allowed in Google News, even though I’m in the main Google index.

Conclusion

I’m not saying that any publisher will actually want to stay out of Google. But robots.txt isn’t the answer to the problem of how publishers get paid for or control access to their content.

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Visitors to UK newspaper sites look at an average of 2.5 pages a day, according to data from Alexa. But 62.8% of users look at just one page (figures originally posted here).

In terms of daily page views per user, the Sun (4 pages), Guardian (3.1) and Telegraph (2.9) are above average. Visitors to the Mail site look at just 2.4 pages a day – so while the Mail may have come top in the July ABCe figures, maybe its large number of overseas visitors aren’t staying to look round the site.

Stickiness of UK newspaper sites

• Better than average figures are in bold.
• The bounce rate is the percentage of visits that consisted of just one page (so a low number is good).
• These figures are 3-month averages. These change on a daily basis at Alexa – so they may have altered slightly by the time you check. Click the papers’ names to see the current data.
• The overall average at the bottom is a simple average – it has not been weighted by traffic.

Page views vs bounce rate

The table is ranked by daily page views per user. The bounce rate is another measure of stickiness. It doesn’t exactly correlate with page views, as papers may have differing proportions of loyal, engaged users who visit lots of pages. The more pages that these users visit, the better the page view figure – but they won’t affect the bounce rate.

The Telegraph has a worse bounce rate than the sites near it in the table, perhaps because the great success with its Digg tool doesn’t always lead to multi-page visits?

Using Alexa data

There are issues with using Alexa data like this as it underrepresents UK users, who may have differing usage patterns to other visitors. However, as it seems to underrepresent them more or less equally, the rankings should be OK even if the absolute figures are all out by the same margin.

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The latest figures for UK users  from the audited ABCes together with Compete‘s figures for American site usage show how USA traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites (figures originally posted here).

On average, US traffic is 36.8% of the UK traffic (ie there is just over one US visitor for every 3 UK visitors). The figure for the Telegraph is slightly higher (44.5%) and for the Mail it’s a massive 62.5%.

These figures are all for June 2009. The FT wasn’t audited in June’s ABCes. The Express isn’t in the ABCes. I had planned to use Alexa data but Compete seems a bit more robust.

The figures are further proof that the Mail’s success in the June ABCes was driven by American searches for Michael Jackson’s kids.

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