video

5 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 16, 2010)

2010-04-22
By: James Royal-Lawson

Video pollution on the web

In depth paper on First Monday covering the problem of video spam (such as where users upload duplicate content, or incorrectly tag films in order to appear in popular searches) and also some possible solutions.

The decline of the homepage

More and more often visitors are landing on pages deep in your website. The start page is losing its importance as a navigational starting point. That starting point has moved to the search engines.

Why do Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics Stats Differ?

The analytcs and SEO communities have been bubbling with comments, complaints and questions as to why the visit data in Google Analytics doesn’t match the newly available data in Google Webmaster Tools, Nikki has a go at explaining it.

Intranet support for emergency planning – the air flight ban in Europe

The recent situation in Europe gives an ideal opportunity to look at and assess the effectiveness of your Intranet in connection with crisis and emergency management.

Introducing Google Places

Local Business Center has been renamed and has received an update. Google are introducing interior photos (that they offer to take for free), QR codes, service areas.

2010-01-19
By: James Royal-Lawson

National Rail Enquiries

A quick check of National Rail Enquiries’ new web site (released 2009-12-15) against a handful of best-practices and web standards.

The site was heralded as being made “more user-friendly after sophisticated consumer research techniques” in ATOC’s press release.

Although redesigns of websites (especially prominent ones) almost always throw up a fair few negative comments. There have been quite a number of complaints.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

2009-12-31
By: James Royal-Lawson

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9105942950207814319

Same procedure as last year James?

Dinner for one is pretty much totally unknown in the country of it’s creation, yet a great number of other countries – of which Sweden is one – seem to know the script off by heart!

Over the years that I’ve lived in Sweden, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve introduced myself as James (especially around Christmas and New year) and heard “Same procedure as last year James?” in reply. At first I just gave a puzzled, but polite, smile as it was clearly me who was missing the joke. Then I saw “Dinner for One” the sketch and received a bit of a briefing on it’s history.

It’s a good example about how something can be so visible and well known, but yet totally unknown at the same time – what is obvious to one group, it a mystery to another.

Which brings us to the web connection…

What you think or see is not always what your visitors think or see. With personalised search, Local search, mixed media search – you may think you have a top 3 listing in SERPs, but for your visitor perhaps you’re a fair bit lower down.

You may think that you have all the information your customers need on your website, only to find that they are all discussing your products on a price comparison site.

Perhaps you thought no-one would notice that 2 hour downtime you had in the early hours of the morning, only to find that all your Australian clients have been talking about it from the moment it happened on Twitter.