The Wardman Wire

This may sound arcane, but it also explains why your political blog is getting a lot less traffic than should be the the case. This article is the second in a series of 3 looking at this problem.

When I wrote about this briefly before, I highlighted the fact that half of internet searches in the UK are done on Google using the “UK pages” option of Google:

51% of UK searches go through google.co.uk.

Further, I showed that Guido Fawkes’ blog is nowhere to be seen on Google “UK pages” searches.

The implication is that UK Political Blogs are missing out on fully 50% of the traffic they could be getting from internet searches in the UK. That is a lot of potential traffic - and engagement in political dialogue - that is being lost.

In this article, I will look at some other UK Political blogs. My test method is to search for the blogs “tag line” and “name” in Google and Google UK, and to see where the blog appears in the results. I am not claiming total accuracy, but it is a good indicator.

The blogs and search results are tabulated below.

Results of Search Tests

Where does that leave us?

It leaves me having spent too much time on this blog for one day, so I’ll do the interpretation, conclusions and some suggested ways of getting round this problem for the final article in the series.

But I will outline my conclusions as headings:

• Around half of UK search requests go through the “UK pages” search of Google. I tested 5 of the most prominent UK political blogs, and they all suffer very badly in searches on the Google “UK pages” option, except for a search on the site name.
• This whole issue has arisen because Google has tried to provide a good localised service to the UK.
• It is unfortunate that many early political bloggers are on international (e.g., .com) domains, as this falls foul of the Google algorithmn which priotitises UK sites.
• I’d suggest UK political blogs look at their own figures, and then consider how much traffic is coming from search engines. This traffic could potentially be doubled.
• Do a health check as to any relevant domains that you do not own. They are not expensive to buy, but it’s very difficult to get them back from someone else afterwards if your website is not a recognised legal entity.

[Edit: 20070508. Small changes to tidy up article.]

Tags: google, pickled politics, nhs blog doctor, labourhome, libdemvoice, conservativehome, nhsblogdoctor, pickledpolitics, seo, political blogging, blogosphere, uk political blogs[tags]google, pickled politics, nhs blog doctor, labourhome, libdemvoice, conservativehome, nhsblogdoctor, pickledpolitics, seo, political blogging, blogosphere, uk political blogs[/tags]