SEO Comes to the Federal Government December 11, 2008

Peter Whoriskey writes in The Washington Post today about the U.S. government’s work with search engine giants Google and Microsoft in opening up previously “hidden” site pages for better SEO. Virtually millions of federal Web pages are largely invisible to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines mostly because the data, while public, can only be accessed after filling out an online form and crawlers generally skip over these kind of databases. To make databases visible, the feds have to make each item into a Web page and then provide a list of those Web page URLs to the search engines.

The Post article notes some grumbling by federal information technology officials over the costs and manpower needed to transition their sites — the Smithsonian alone gave Google 78,000 links. But given that users these days expect immediate gratification to search queries or else will usually exit the site, it looks like a necessary step in the right direction to better serve the public as well as building site traffic.

Doonesbury and Post-Election Twitterholics November 12, 2008

In case you missed it, yesterday’s Doonesbury cartoon nails how many of us political news junkies are doing post-election, with no more waking up to tweets of the latest swing state polls and head counts at campaign rallies. It feels weird not to have campaigns to follow, or at least until the 2010 senate races heat up!

Blogging Goes Mainstream… again October 19, 2008

I’ve been a blogger since 2003 and so have used blogs for years as an information bridge between old and new media for searches. What seemed to make perfect sense to me back in 2003, apparently has finally become fully embraced by mainstream media, according to eMarketer senior analyst, Paul Verna.

In his story, Blogging Becomes Mainstream, Paul Verna writes that “blogging has become so pervasive and influential that the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared,” noting a Technorati-sponsored State of the Blogosphere 2008 survey conducted in July and August 2008 by Decipher. The survey’s comScore Media Metrix blog numbers come in at 77 million unique visitors in the US in August 2008, compared with 75.1 million unique visitors to MySpace and 41 million to Facebook. In July 2008, comScore ranked two blogs — OMG and TMZ — as numbers 1 and 2 in their list of the top 10 entertainment sites.

In an interview with eMarketer, Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati said, ‘Blogs are now mainstream media. We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who are creating real media experiences. At the same time, you’re also seeing mainstream media come the other direction to add blog content.’

These days, looking at the sites of mainstream media heavyweights such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, you readily see the truth of Jalichandra’s words. Both sites have digitally exploded with in-house blogs [NYT: 63; WaPo: 85] that cover huge readership segments in news, lifestyle and opinion with brand extension to outside blog content via blog rolls and featured blog posts. Mainstream media’s first tentative steps into blogging just a few short years ago have become a stampede — paying dividends in more content variety for readers and higher traffic stats for the company bottom line.

NBC Universal Rebrands Local News Sites October 15, 2008

As reported in today’s MediaPost TVWatch, the WaPo and Adweek, NBCU has redesigned its local TV station Web sites, dropping call letters and/or channel numbers, with the goal of turning the sites into local news portals. The initial roll out includes stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and New York.

TVWatch asks the question whether dropping a station’s well known online call letters/numbers (ex: DC’s nbc4.com) is throwing away years of well-earned publicity and local brand familiarity with broadcast and online viewers.

I don’t think so. NBCU is keeping the URL short and catchy – ex: NBCChicago.com – and have a redirect from the old URL to the new one. What NBCU might lose initially in confused viewers, they’ll reap in more traffic to these well designed and information-enriched sites that enjoy the branded look and ease of use of NBC’s home site. I like the change and as a web analytics geek, I look forward to seeing any disclosed metrics on the new sites. Very cool NBCU!

Here’s beta NBCChicago.com: