The Archives
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11.10.08Is this when we start to grow up as an industry?Martin Clarke, the publisher of Mail Online, says that the figure used to demonstrate the success of a website - the number of global unique users - is meaningless. He told the Society of Editors today that global monthly unique users figure, which most of the national newspaper websites now report via ABCe, is an “utter waste of time”. He is right up to a point. The figures are in danger of losing their meaning. As Charles Arthur pointed out here in September, when any publisher can use pay-per-click, extreme SEO and a host of other search engine gimmicks, the number becomes ...
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08.11.08And the Times’s strategy is … buy everything in sightYou've got to wonder two things about The Times's SEM strategy on the basis of this: 1) How much does it end up paying Google every time it publishes another article? 2) Is this really a mature way to increase the number of uniques? You might describe this as the scattergun approach - if you buy enough keywords, you might get to No 1 in the ABCe figures! [caption id="attachment_231" align="aligncenter" width="260" caption="This afternoon's Times front page with this afternoon's Google sponsored links superimposed. You'll need to click on the image to get it at a readable size"][/caption] Related posts:How the Guardian, Times and Independent ...
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08.08.08What the Madeleine saga tells us about The Guardian1) That it employs a marketing company for its Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategy 2) That it, as Marc Sands marketing director at GNM confirms, buys thousands of keywords a week 3) That it doesn't have oversight of what the marketing company does 4) That it is relying on SEM instead of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Do a Google search for "Madeleine McCann" and note which media group ranks most highly but has not had to resort to buying the phrase 5) That, despite all the hubris at Farringdon Road about a mature approach to web readership, it's all about unique numbers and holding ...
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08.08.08We made a mistake buying Madeleine keywords, says The GuardianIt's an easy mistake to make - perhaps they were trying to buy the keywords for Madeleine Stowe and somebody's fingers slipped. From: journalism.co.uk The Guardian has admitted it mistakenly bought the keywords Madeleine McCann from Google. By wrongly purchasing the keywords a link to the paper's coverage of Madeleine's disappearance appeared in a column of sponsored results when a search for her name was made on Google. The newspaper has now taken down the link and has reviewed the list of keywords it owns, Marc Sands, marketing director for the Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk. The paper's purchase of the words Madeleine McCann was criticised by ...
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07.29.08A survival guide for sub editors and other curmudgeonsI've spent more than half my career in the media subbing on local, regional and national papers. As a writer and and editor, I was saved by subs on countless occasions. My blog posts are probably littered with literals and factual editors and, I'm sure, could do with a good going over by a decent sub. But if I was a reporter now and an old hand sidled up to me and suggested that I might like to retrain as a sub, I'd run a mile. And as for joining one of the nationals' subbing schemes for graduate trainees ... fugeddaboutit. We ...
Recent posts
- Cost of newsprint to rise over 20 per cent
- The BBC is not the bad guy in this story
- Is this when we start to grow up as an industry?
- Extra, extra - ink-still-wet special edition
- Bring on the BBC’s local online video
- Subs - in transition, not out of a job
- What happens to newspapers?
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