So, I run Media UK, the UK’s online media directory. Media UK’s an interesting project for me: it allows me to test things on a large site, and bring those learnings to those that pay my salary.

Only 11% of Media UK’s traffic is “direct” - that is to say, only 11% of people who visit Media UK do it by typing “www.mediauk.com” into their browsers. A whopping 77% of Media UK’s traffic comes from search engines - predominantly, like most websites, from Google, which is responsible for 79% of all the search engine traffic.

Among the plethora of Google Analytics reports, you can view ‘top landing pages’: those pages people first saw when coming to the Media UK. Given that most traffic comes from search engines, this roughly equates to the websites where Media UK outperforms a media owner’s own website - by coming high, if not #1, for the media owner’s keywords on Google. This, therefore, provides a list of the not altogether fairly titled “worst UK media sites for Search Engine Optimisation” - where people have visited Media UK instead of the website they were looking for.

The full list is below, but let’s examine a few.

Tiny Pop is the top of the list. Tiny Pop is a TV channel on Sky, if you’ve not heard of it. Media UK is currently #1 in a search for Tiny Pop. Indeed, that Google search doesn’t actually bring back the ‘real’ Tiny Pop site at all. It does bring back a few directory pages like mine, as well, amusingly, a link to a Yahoo question where someone is wondering how to find the Tiny Pop website. When you do find it (clue) the website is a fully-featured Flash site. The makers have produced alternative text links to help Google spider the site, but they’ve also carefully made them display:none on the front page. As a result, Google have banned them entirely, and tinypop.com appears nowhere on Google. (The bizarre thing is that the links also appear within the Flash movie, so if it’s an aesthetic reason why they’ve hidden the HTML links, why replicate them within the Flash?)

The list is also full of media names which haven’t been carried over to their online presence. As an example, the Reading Evening Post has a website which they’ve branded ‘getreading’. Nowhere on the page does it appear to mention ‘Reading Evening Post’, and while the page description does on Google (and getreading.co.uk appears higher than Media UK’s page), it’s not altogether obvious that if you wanted the Reading Evening Post’s site, you’d click the link.

London Lite appears to manage both of the above crimes - a different brand and making life hard for search engines. Brilliantly, their website has in the title bar “L o n d o n L i t e”, thus making it virtually invisible for search engines (albeit it still appears at #3). The main website for London Lite is actually branded thisislondon.co.uk (just like sister publication the Evening Standard). Once more, even though Media UK’s result is #4 in Google, it still gets a good amount of visits.

And some media brands in this list suffer from their very name. How do you spell “2ten” anyway? Is “Mercia” really the name of a radio station? A search for mercia fm radio station gets Media UK at #1. Mercia’s website (split between merciafm.co.uk and mercia.co.uk, bad GCap) contains the markup <title>Mercia</title><meta name="description" content="Mercia" /> which doesn’t help too much in a quest for excellent Google optimisation. (I have no doubt Robin’s team will fix this pretty fast, incidentally - they’re quite good).

Finally, talkSPORT is in this list, and I didn’t understand why. You can use Google Analytics to drill down to “what people searched for to find this particular page” level; and it would appear that a search for talk sport uk brings Media UK quite high in the list. talkSPORT would do well to add “UK” in their title/description somewhere.

This has been an interesting exercise; and I’m gratified that none of the websites I have some responsibility for (either now or in the past) appear on the list. If you’re a media company website owner reading this page, please don’t change your websites; I like the traffic.

The worst UK media sites for SEO - from mediauk.com
1. Tiny Pop
2. The Scottish Sun
3. Century Radio 105.4
4. Reading Evening Post
5. Blackmore Vale Magazine
6. South Wales Echo
7. London Lite
8. Official UK Playstation Magazine
9. talkSPORT
10. Sunday Express
11. Derby Evening Telegraph
12. Kiss 100
13. 2ten FM
14. Classic FM
15. Mercia

Photo: Jan Krömer. Used under licence. My full disclosure details my relationship with Google and Media UK.

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