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[Update 1/7/08 3:30pm: re-edited for flow and length]

At the weekend the Independent on Sunday (known as Sindie) published a long article examining the Audit Bureau of Circulation (Electronic) - ABCe - readership figures for national newspaper websites. Joy Lo Dico argued that newspaper websites get a good proportion of their traffic by running material considerably downmarket from that run in the papers.

In my opinion there are a few problems in Joy’s analysis:

1 - Joy points the finger for running “linkbait” at a number of other national newspaper websites at quite some length - notably the Mail and the Telegraph.

The same issue of the Independent on Sunday contained (for example) a double page spread on how “hair length reflects economic conditions”, and the website has a photo of three Supermodels as the most prominent picture, I think there’s more than a little “pot calling the kettle black” going on here.

2 - The numerical analysis draws conclusions on very small differences (of well under 1%) without taking account of the assumptions of the ABCe audit process. The article itself contains evidence of this weakness, and documents a sudden jump of 5 million (a small matter of 30% or so) in the Telegraph “Online Readership” in a month by simply changing their “supplier of counting services”.

This is going to need more than one post for a comprehensive response, so I thought I’d start with a (slightly lighthearted) look at Celebrity Stories in the Independent on Sunday edition (29 June) containing this article.

The Papers would Blush

The article said:

The paper would blush but anything goes on their sites

One can’t imagine Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, a man of sound family values, putting it on the cover of his newspaper, but the recently relaunched Mail Online isn’t so shy. With Martin Clarke, a hardball Associated Newspapers veteran at the tiller, the website isn’t scared of putting celebrity above the fold, digitally speaking. Along with the Ronaldo snaps on Thursday, readers were just a click away from stories on David Beckham taking his children for a spin in a Rolls-Royce, Princess Beatrice having shoe trouble and Amy Winehouse on the booze, all with pictures attached. You had to scroll down a pretty long way to find columnist Melanie Phillips.

This distinct move has done wonders for the Mail’s online circulation. In the May ABCs – the Audit Bureau of Circulations measurement of traffic to the newspaper websites – it leapfrogged the Telegraph and Guardian to take the top spot with 18.7 million unique users, an impressive achievement for a website that only really geared up in 2006.

I wonder whether the same is true for Sindie on Sunday?

There is a blow-by-blow account of celebrities in the Independent on Sunday at the end of this article. The answer is - yes - it is full of celebrities.

Sindie’s Website

Moving on to the seriously highbrow Independent website, we have as the largest photograph - this (Monday) morning anyway - a completely celebrity free photograph of three Supermodels that no one has ever heard of with the heading “Mandela’s Birthday Dinner“. I’m sure he will find out who these anonymous women are, and explain their news value. Click through on the image for the full screenshot.

There are a lot more non-celebrity articles on the home page of the Sindie.

Up and at ‘em in Google

A few weeks ago Robin Goad over at Hitwise wrote an analysis of how the Independent is getting more hits from search engines:

“The real change has been the amount of traffic that the paper receives from search engines. An increase in paid search activity has played a role – the proportion of paid search traffic has increased from 1% in November last year to 11% last month – but the key to the Independent’s success seems to be more effective organic search engine optimisation (SEO). Searches for the term ‘independent’ are actually on the decline, and the proportion of traffic that the site sites receives from its main brand term has fallen by 84% since November. But, at the same time, the number of distinct search terms sending traffic to the Independent has increased from under 1,000 in November to over 10,000 in March.”

I wonder how they managed that?

The Problems

Traffic Measurement and Judgement

I’ll be returning to the numbers side of this story next time. This sort of thing is nonsense:

The Mail’s new digital confidence has shaken up the ABCs. The Telegraph, which had taken top spot in the previous month, came in second with 18.4 million, while the Guardian, the long-standing leader, slunk in at third with 18.3 million.

Anybody who thinks that any web traffic measuring process (even the “gold standard” ABCe version) can meaningfully distinguish differences between competing websites of well under 1% has not done their homework. My opinion is that any differences between websites, even using identical processes, are not worth talking about unless they are over - perhaps - 10%.

Main Stream Media and Search Engine Optimisation

Sindie in the Search Engines

I think the Main Stream Media are becoming very “tricksy”, as Gollum would put it, in their use of search engines. This is altogether more serious than using photos of Maria Sharapova pouting to draw traffic via Google Images. Here is a screenshot of the metadata fields for the Independent on Sunday article we started with.

The article quoted at the top, which ends up being almost completely about the number of Unique Visitors to different newspaper websites, somehow has a “summary” served to Google which reads thus:

It was a picture that would make many blush: Cristiano Ronaldo, in swimming shorts, nestling between the legs of his bikini-clad girlfriend on a beach in Sardinia, a fig leaf for her dignity. The Daily Mail ran it on page 23, in among other less racy shots. On the Mail Online website, it was unavoidable at the top of the homepage.

In the long term this type of “summary spam” will damage the traffic quality of newspapers playing the game - and deservedly so. In the meantime it puts them at risk of someone putting a SPAM report into Google under “Page does not match Google’s description” or “Misleading or repeated words“.

Daily Mail beyond the Pale

I’ll cut the Independent a bit of slack here (not a lot, mind); at least the Indy hasn’t - as far as I can tell - started indulging in virtual keyword spam. The Daily Mail are using filenames such as:

“Cristiano-Ronaldo-gets-hot-heavy-model-girlfriend-Italy.html“

with an article headlined:

Extra, extra! Read all about me! Ronaldo shows pals his holiday snaps (in the Daily Mail)

It’s not black-hat by any means, but certainly a little mucky. There’s a good seam of MSM-sceptic articles here waiting for a blogger or journalist willing to do some digging (Tim, Justin, Mr Isle?). Might it be a story?

Wrapping Up

If I was an advertiser, I’d be asking some very hard questions of the Mail - since that type of article name implies that a proportion of the Daily Mail’s traffic is 13 year old boys with well-develop forearms (one forearm, anyway); it is not the kind of high quality traffic I would be looking for in return for my advertising fee.

The difference between edgy activity with the Press Complaints Commission, and the Internet equivalent, is that Big Brother Google can defenestrate a website with no need to have you “bang to rights”. It goes like this:

1. Google owns the index.
2. Google controls the index.
3. Google decides who is in the index.
4. “You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye“.

Appendix

Celebrities in the Independent on Sunday 29/6/2008

(This blow by blow account can be skipped, but is included for completeness.)

First let’s skirt the page 1, 8, 9, and Editorial “Top Tories have shares in Tesco, BP and Shell shock horror!” (i.e, just like the rest of the country) hatchet job - perhaps they could examine the Independent’s parent company next.

The non-celebrity entirely serious news from the rest of the paper included:

• Page 2. Wendy Alexander. Car Tax. Fair enough.
• Page 3. Glastonbury. Including main photo of girl blowing bubbles. Others of girl screaming in crowd, and another girl screaming in crowd.
• Page 4 and 5. Wimbledon off-court Diary - “News” in the paper. Including unnecessary model-girl-tennis-player photos of Anna Kournikova (knocked out in the 2nd Round) and Maria Sharapova (knocked out June 26th).
• Page 6 and 7. News. Fair enough.
• Page 8 and 9. People of Zimbabwe become political football in hatchet job on Tories. Shame.
• Page 10. Ad.
• Page 11. “Treasure Island” prequel.
• Page 12. “News” in the paper, “Fashion” on the website. Double-page spread about the “hairlength index of economic confidence” (cue photos of seductive Veronica Lake in short skirt, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Joanna Lumley, Jenny Howarth, Jennifer Aniston and Agyness Deyn). “Fellow celeb Pixie Geldof” gets a mention too. Cue - also - all the famous celebrity names in the search engines. To give them their due on this one, the Kinky Boots stayed in the shoe cupboard.
• Page 14. News. Fair Enough.
• Page 15. “News”. Uma Thurman and Arpad Basson. Photo of happy, sexy, couple. Mentions to Uma Thurman and Arpad Basson (obviously), and lots of juicy exes and films for Google fodder: Pulp Fiction, Gary Oldman, Elle Macpherson, Farrah Fawcett, Walk-on parts for Gianni Versace, Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela, Elton John, Timothy Leary, Dali Lama, Zyklon-B, IG Farben. Two celeb pictures in the paper (nice low cut dress plus a tender - aaaahhh! - kiss), 5 celeb pics on the website.
• Page 16-17. News. 60 years of the NHS. Fair enough.
• Page 18. Ad.
• Page 19. News. Cancer Trial. Fair enough.
• Page 20. Ad.
• Page 21. Janet Street-Porter. Gokspeak, and probably catflaps. Lots of celeb name-checks, but I can’t face the JSP test today.
• Page 22. A full page about PITA’s “I’d rather go naked” campaign. Cue pics of Sophie Ellis-Bextor (Holding lunch for my dog. Yum.), Dennis Rodman, Alicia Silverstone and Eva Mendes (Score one for the Sindie - they don’t censor buttocks. How would we discuss Robert Mugabe if we banned the word “arse“.) And Jessica Simpson in a “Real Girls Eat Meat” T-Shirt. Cue also - in the text of the article - Carrie Underwood, Tony Romo, Jonathon Rhys Meyers, Paul McCartney. A pretty good celeb keyword percentage for 453 words.

• Page 23. News. David Davis. Fair enough.
• Page 24-25. Ads.

I’ll stop there and ignore p40-41 (Sooty and Nelson Mandela), p43 (Celeb Breakups) and p47 (UFO alert).