currybetdotnet Search archive

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

Chipwrapper and the Ofcom PSB review
It seems that quite a lot of people I'm connected to via teh interwebz over the last couple of weeks have been slowly making their way through the mountain of documents that Ofcom have issued as part of their second review into Public Service Broadcasting. Martin Moore, whilst praising the PSB blog, has been thoroughly bogged down in the detail: " The wonderful thing about the internet is that OFCOM can publish as much as it likes without worrying about...

Read the full post - Published April 26, 2008 in Newspapers, OFCOM, Search

How many British newspapers use sitemap.xml to help search engine indexing?
When I started my 'Newspaper Site Search Smackdown' the other week, within a few minutes of the first part being published Bruce had posted the following comment. " 'a newspaper site search ought to be able to index content directly from a CMS faster than Google can crawl a site' - Perhaps, but this seems kind of irrelevant. Any well built site will be creating a sitemap.xml and pinging Google whenever any updates are made so that it's indexes will...

Read the full post - Published April 24, 2008 in Newspapers, Search

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 6 - Google vs The Search Engine All-Stars
I've been running a series of Newspaper Site Search Engine Smackdowns to see which papers were able to index their own content faster than Google could. It turned out that the answer was not many, with only The Daily Express, Daily Mail and The Independent getting close to indexing news stories faster than Google's web search did. Although it is the dominant player in the market, Google is not the only search engine, so I also carried out the...

Read the full post - Published April 13, 2008 in Google, Microsoft, Newspapers, Search, Yahoo

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 5 - The Newspapers vs Google
Over the last four days I've been pitting British newspaper site search engines together in a fight to the death to see who had the fresher index - the Newspaper Site Search Smackdown. The Independent triumphed, followed closely by the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. The exercise was prompted by the fact that Google has launched "Search in search" boxes for several of those papers. Kevin Anderson argued that this was an improved user experience for most newspapers,...

Read the full post - Published April 12, 2008 in Google, 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

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 3 - The Guardian vs The Mirror
I'm running a series of smackdowns between British newspaper site search engines, to test how fresh their indexing is. In Round 1, The Sun was put down by The Mail. Yesterday's Round 2 saw a perfect 10 from The Independent, and the lowest score so far, from The Telegraph. Today it is the turn of The Guardian and The Mirror to face the test. The rules The rules of the contest are quite simple. Go to a newspaper homepage...

Read the full post - Published April 10, 2008 in Daily Mirror, Newspapers, Search, The Guardian

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 2 - The Telegraph vs The Independent
I'm running a series of smackdowns between British newspaper site search engines, to test how fresh their indexing is. Yesterday, in Round 1, The Daily Mail had the edge over The Sun. The Mail had 9 of their top 10 headlines indexed and findable via search by 9am - The Sun was left in their wake with only half of their top 10 stories in their index. Today it is the turn of The Telegraph and The Independent. The...

Read the full post - Published April 9, 2008 in Daily Telegraph, Newspapers, Search, The Independent

Newspaper "Site Search Smackdown": Round 1 - The Daily Mail vs The Sun
The other week I wrote about the potential threat to newspaper revenue from Google's new 'Search in search' feature. Links to the article appeared on a few blogs, and Kevin Anderson made the point that Google was doing search better than most newspapers: "Where I might disagree is Martin's argument that it negatively impacts user experience. He says that Google's position is that they can provide search better than the news sites. Well, the sad truth is that whether...

Read the full post - Published April 8, 2008 in Daily Mail, Newspapers, Search, The Sun

The online fall-out of the Daily Express apology to Madeleine McCann's family

Published March 19, 2008 in Daily Express, Google, Media, Newspapers, Search, Web

Chipwrapper goes to church

Published February 23, 2008 in Blogging, Newspapers, Search

Search the blogs of the Miami IA Summit

Published February 15, 2008 in Blogging, IA Summit, Search

Personal search engine optimsation for Information Architects

Published February 2, 2008 in Blogging, IA Summit, Search

Google blocks access to the Biased BBC blog via search

Published January 30, 2008 in BBC, Google, Search

FAQ you! ACAP doesn't do 'attribution' for critics

Published January 25, 2008 in Search, Web

24/7 TV news websites: Part 12 - Search III

Published January 24, 2008 in BBC, CNN, France 24, Search, Television, Web

24/7 TV news websites: Part 11 - Search II

Published January 23, 2008 in France 24, Search, Television, Web

24/7 TV news websites: Part 10 - Search

Published January 22, 2008 in BBC, CNN, Search, Television, Web, Yahoo

Reflecting on reflections of a Newsosaur

Published December 30, 2007 in Blogging, Newspapers, Search

ACAP - flawed and broken from the start?

Published December 2, 2007 in Newspapers, Popular, Search, Web

That 2002 BBCi Search impartiality problem in full

Published November 29, 2007 in BBC, Radio, Search

Headline buzz tag cloud now on Chipwrapper

Published September 10, 2007 in Newspapers, Search

Pavarotti and Jane Tomlinson's deaths test search

Published September 7, 2007 in Google, Search

Chipwrapper gets a rugby edition for the world cup

Published September 6, 2007 in Search

Introducing Chipwrapper - a UK newspaper search engine

Published September 3, 2007 in Newspapers, Search

Using 'TEST' as a test search term is quite testing for TravelMail and others

Published August 7, 2007 in Newspapers, Search

BBC iPlayer search plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and an iPlayer Google Toolbar button

Published August 2, 2007 in BBC, Google, Search, iPlayer

Back at the BBC (slight return)

Published July 24, 2007 in BBC, Search

Google Toolbar buttons for British newspapers including headline feeds

Published July 19, 2007 in Google, Newspapers, Search

British newspaper search plugins for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2

Published July 11, 2007 in Newspapers, Search

BBC search plugins for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2

Published June 29, 2007 in BBC, Search

Tweaking my old Glastonbury articles in response to searches

Published June 15, 2007 in BBC, Music, Search

Google search results promoting YouTube's Premier League copyright infringement

Published June 13, 2007 in Football, Google, Search, YouTube

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

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

Who benefits financially from the Madeleine McCann publicity juggernaut?

Published June 1, 2007 in Children and Teenagers, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Media, Newspapers, Search, The Times

How much did shingles cost in 1963?

Published May 18, 2007 in Google, Music, Search

Questionable eBay adverts on Google "Jewish cemetery" searches

Published May 14, 2007 in Google, Search

Google putting Wikipedia extracts at #1 - for Bruce Hornsby anyway

Published March 29, 2007 in Google, Search

My 'biased' view of the Biased BBC blog - part two

Published March 15, 2007 in BBC, Google, Search

Search Engine Land's social bookmarking faux pas

Published March 7, 2007 in Search, Web

Google kills the political Googlebomb - well, unless you are French

Published January 30, 2007 in Google, Search

Sitemaps in search engine news

Published November 16, 2006 in Google, Search, Yahoo

Someone auctions FTP access to a .gov site on eBay

Published November 10, 2006 in Search

High rankings for Wikipedia doesn't mean the net has been hi-jacked by teenagers

Published October 30, 2006 in Google, Search

Ignore the #privacy campaign - searching the internet is not a private activity. Period.

Published October 18, 2006 in Search

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet - Shopping around

Published October 15, 2006 in Search

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet - Easier visual interfaces

Published October 14, 2006 in Search

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet - Let the information come to you

Published October 13, 2006 in Search

Smarter searching: liberating information from the Internet - Optimise your browser for search

Published October 12, 2006 in Search