currybetdotnet Daily Express archive

'Sorry - this page cannot be found': How newspapers handle 404 errors - Part 1
A comment when I started my recent 'Newspaper Site Search Smackdown' series of posts prompted me to go and have a look at which British newspapers use sitemap.xml files. As it turned out, it was only the Daily Mail and The Scotsman which did (well, and The Telegraph and The Mirror and Metro), which meant that I got to have a close look at the 404 error pages generated by the others. I thought it might be worth running through...

Read the full post - Published May 5, 2008 in Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Newspapers, The Guardian

At last, some varied 'popular' search terms on the Express site
It seems I got a bit over-excited earlier this week when I wrote about the Daily Express changing two of the most popular search they list on their search results page. That appears in fact to have just been the first step towards providing a broader spread of search terms on the page. For nearly three months, the site had displayed the same set of ten search terms - including one blank one - as the most popular on the...

Read the full post - Published May 3, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search

OMG! They are not searching for 'Princess Diana' anymore at the Daily Express!
I've mentioned before that I have a little Perl script that keeps an eye on the 'Most popular searches' at the Daily Express site. Each day it faithfully goes and checks what they are, and then alerts me with a 'VROOT! VROOT!' email if anything changes. This morning the alarm went off for the first time in 74 days. The Express has finally changed the list of what users are most looking for, by altering two of the terms. You...

Read the full post - Published April 30, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 4 - The Daily Express vs The Times
I'm running a series of smackdowns between British newspaper site search engines, to test how fresh their indexing is. The Daily Mail triumphed over The Sun in Round 1, and in Round 2, The Independent emerged victorious over The Telegraph, getting a perfect 10 out of 10 in the process. Yesterday was a low scoring Round 3, with The Guardian just edging out The Mirror, by 7 points to 6. Today I'll be finishing off the inter-newspaper contests with...

Read the full post - Published April 11, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, Search, The Times

The Daily Express is back on the McCann case
When you are young and you fall off your bike, you are often told that the best thing to do is to get straight back on it again. And it must have been that kind of week for the Daily Express, as they took their first baby-steps backs into reporting the Madeleine McCann case in the post-front page apology era. Their first story online since the apology concerned Robert Murat, someone else whose life has been changed irrevocably by British...

Read the full post - Published March 25, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers

The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family
There is only one story about the media in today's media, and that is the story of the Daily Express making a front page apology to the family of missing Madeleine McCann. There is plenty of fall-out from the apology on the web as well, where the story was the lead item this morning, with the additional admission: "Please note that, for legal reasons, we have disabled reader comments on this article". The effects are felt strongest if you try...

Read the full post - Published March 19, 2008 in Daily Express, Google, Media, Newspapers, Search, Web

Those Daily Express migrant arrest statistics in full
The Daily Express was leading yesterday with another story about the "extent of the damage unlimited immigration is causing to the fabric of society". Statistics are fun, of course. The Express claim that "A Migrant arrested every 4 minutes in UK" is based on an extrapolated figure of 360 foreigners being arrested a day, which makes up 7% of the total. If I remember my O-Level maths correctly, that suggests that the total number of arrests per day is 5,142,...

Read the full post - Published February 12, 2008 in Daily Express, Politics

Now the Daily Express RSS feeds are in Latin
There is something very wrong with the RSS feeds from the Daily Express - and I don't just mean that the constant focus on Diana makes it look like they are ten years out-of-date. I've already written about how I had to pull the Express content from the Chipwrapper sports feed, as the stories in it still have Sam Allardyce at Newcastle, and Fabio Capello denying links with Liverpool - December 5th was the last time the feed updated. I've...

Read the full post - Published January 15, 2008 in Daily Express, Newspapers, RSS

The wit and wisdom of the Daily Express reader
I noticed late last night via the wonder of Firefox's Live Bookmarks and the Chipwrapper Headlines RSS feed that the Daily Express was leading online with the story 'MAGISTRATE PUNISHED IN VEIL ROW'. It told the story of a public servant who walked out of his job without explanation, causing a trial to be re-scheduled, which wasted taxpayers money. You'd normally think the Express would be complaining about that, but since he did it in the face of the UK's...

Read the full post - Published January 9, 2008 in Daily Express

Biblical Christian names still out-number Mohammed for Britain's boys
The tabloids have been spluttering their outrage at the news that Mohammed is now the second most popular boys name in the UK. Well, provided you massage the figures of course, I mean, why let facts get in the way of your editorial line that 'the fuzzy-wuzzies are taking over our country'. To get that result, you have to add up all the variations on Muhammed, whilst steadfastly refusing to aggregate any other names - I noticed both Jake and...

Read the full post - Published December 21, 2007 in Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, The Sun

More RSS errors - The Sun and The Express

Published December 16, 2007 in Daily Express, RSS, The Sun

How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 1 - Daily Express

Published November 6, 2007 in Accessibility, Articles, Daily Express, Newspapers, Product review, Web

The Daily Express Inheritance Tax 'Crusade' re-writes British politics. And massages the numbers in the process.

Published October 10, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Politics

Guess who is the the favourite search term on the Daily Express site?

Published June 11, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Search

Today's burning question: "What will the weather be like on the UK's Bank Holiday?"

Published May 7, 2007 in Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Greece, Media, Newspapers

Daily Express RSS feed 404s

Published May 3, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Web

Newspapers 2.0: How Web 2.0 is the Daily Express?

Published April 23, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Web

The ten things most likely to be on The Daily Express front page

Published April 3, 2007 in Daily Express, Media, Newspapers, Popular

"Has Britain gone to the dogs?" - The Daily Express certainly hopes their readers think so

Published February 21, 2007 in Daily Express, Media

Failing to petition Number Ten on Darwin Day

Published February 12, 2007 in Daily Express, Politics, eGovernment

Searching The Daily Express

Published July 11, 2006 in Daily Express, Media, Product review, Search

The Daily Express on Firefox. Ish.

Published January 19, 2005 in Daily Express, Web