Infographic: How Aussies with mobile phones spend their weekends

Google has released a fascinating infographic detailing the mobile use of Aussies in their blog post, Insights into the Mobile Aussie Weekend.

Useful for communications and policy people in government, it provides insights into how Australians are using their mobile phone to search the internet over weekends based on Google's statistical data.

A Day in the Mobile Aussie Weekend

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Is it time for government to take Google Plus seriously?

Often in government there's only two social media networks discussed and considered for community engagement and communications, Facebook and Twitter.

MySpace is a distant memory, LinkedIn is used just for resumes and services like FourSquare, Plurk, Ning and others are not well-known.

Also not that well known is Google Plus, and perhaps rightly so - it is very new and still quite small in social media terms, only around 62 million users, although it is predicted to grow to over 293 million by the end of 2012, or so Google believes.

However with the recent integration of Google Plus into Google search, it may be time for governments to consider establishing Google Plus channels alongside Facebook and Twitter, due to the impact on search results.

With Google's search tool holding close to 90% of Australia's search market, it is a more dominant 'publisher' than News Limited - and remains the number one website in Australia. Search engines are also the primary source of traffic for Australian government websites, with an average of over 40% of visitors reaching government sites from a search engine (according to Hitwise) - and therefore around 36% coming direct from Google.

So what has Google done? According to Gizmodo, they've integrated Google Plus into their search product in three ways,

First, it now provides "Personal Results" which include media—photos, blog posts, etc—that have been privately shared with you as well as your own stuff. Any images you've set to share using Picasa will also be displayed. Second, Google Search will now auto-complete queries to people in your circles and will display people who might also be interested in what you're searching for in the search results. Finally, it simplifies the process of finding other Google+ profiles for people or specific interest groups based on your query. So if you search for, say, NASA, it will display Google+ profile pages for NASA and space-related Google+ interest groups in addition to the normal results.

Whether you believe this is a good move, a legal move, or not, it does provide opportunities for organisations to leverage Google Plus to improve their overall presence in Google search by operating a Google Plus account.

It's certainly something to keep an eye on, if not actively consider. 

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Half-day information briefing on Google products in Canberra on 9 December

The Department of Health and Ageing is holding a free half-day information briefing for public servants on Google's products on Thursday 9 December in Canberra.

At the briefing Google representatives will demonstrate how Google's search service can provide insights into top searches, interesting trends and the use of search in behavioural analysis and prediction, such as how flu outbreaks may be predicted using search data.

Google will also discuss and demonstrate other tools that may be useful to government agencies, including:

• Google Insights for Search
• Google Wonder Wheel
• Google Hot Trends
• Google Scholar
• Google Maps
• Google Adwords
• Youtube competitions
• Google Analytics
• Google Docs
• Google Enterprise

To learn more, and to register visit http://googleinfosession.eventbrite.com.

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The Google in Government Symposium - notes from the day

On Wednesday 18 March I attended the Google in Government Symposium, hosted by Hedloc.

I had planned to liveblog the day, as I liveblogged the recent Politics and Technology forum, however due to a lack of available wi-fi (the National Convention Centre still charges $40 for six hours access - which I was not personally willing to pay), I resorted to taking notes on PC, which I've provided below in an edited form.

I also twittered the event as a personal stream-of-consciousness record and thanks to the dozen or so people who asked questions of the presenters through me or discussed the event with me on Twitter.

The record of the Twitter conversation can be found here, or under the hashtag #cggov - note that the records are in reverse chronological order, so go to the last result to start at the start of the day.

The text below is an edited version of my personal notes from the day. It does not represent the views of any other individual or organisation. Any errors or omissions are mine.

Google in Government notes transcript

Google Enterprise Overview
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

• Google is the world's largest search engine – 63% market share
• It has 21,000 staff 50% technical/engineering
• Its 2008 revenue was $21B and profit was $5B (that's $1M revenue per staff member)
• Has more than 90 offices globally
• Products available in 117 interface languages across 157 international domains

Google Enterprise

• 40% of world's information is behind firewalls
• 10 of 15 US cabinet agency websites use Google search as their search tool
• Washington DC is rolling Google search out to 86 agencies

Google Search Appliance

• Plugs into most data storage

Google Maps/Earth

• APIs for showing your data on Google's maps on your website
• Premier level provides Enterprise support, features, no ads
  

Google Apps

• Messaging, collaboration, security, compliance
• Totally run from the web, no IT install hassles (just firewall access)
• No delay in spam/virus filtering, run from cloud
• 10 million active users, including some large enterprises
• Security and ownership of information is an interesting area
• Claims that Google is one of the most secure environments on the planet – what happens to access to data if a foreign power cuts international data links or legislates that they have the right to view all data?
  

Destination Innovation
Presenter: Alan Noble - Engineering Director, Australia & New Zealand, Google

• Internet has transformed in last ten years from static print world imitation to dynamic, complex, application-rich environment
• Openness meant we could innovate unimpeded
  

His view of the two major trends for innovation

• Open Source
• Open Data

Google is a big supporter of open standards, Open Social Alliance and Open Handset Alliance

Google is very interested in having governments make public data available online on same basis to all organisations and citizens - and has made submission in this vein in the current consultation process.

Some examples of openness

• Make public transportation much more accessible to masses via Google transit (as Adelaide and Perth have done)
• Victoria fires google map, indicating extent and severity of fires, using a real-time fire feed. This reduced load (and cost) for Government servers by shifting it to Google's map servers.

Two technologies changing the face of the web

• APIs (Google maps originally launched with no API and was reverse engineered by clever programmers – Google hired them)
• Gadgets/widgets – over 100,000 websites now syndicating gadgets, billions of pageviews per week – no one organisation could do this.

Four trends on the web

• Open social – about knowledge sharing via collaboration applications, not simply for social engagement
• Geospatial
• Openly available digital information – greater information sharing, environmental benefits, shipping bits not products
• The cloud – software as a service meets utility software – scalable and elastic – will finally make the computer invisible

Destination Search
Presenter: Richard Suhr - Head of Google Enterprise, ANZ & South East Asia, Google

Search challenges for Gov Agencies

• Search is the starting point to the world's information.
• Too much information, hard to organise
• Google has unique position – spent ten years figuring out how to make search work for consumers
• Why is it so much harder to find information in enterprises, than in private life?
  

New US president has made search front-and-centre

Singaporean government came to Google and said they wanted a better search system across all of their government departments. Google took one search appliance – runs all search for all of government. Operates 4 million pages, 300 different search experiences (in agencies)

Quick stats from Google

• When navigation fails, 50% of users turn to search
• 71% use keyword searches to find products and services
• 90% of consumers said they used site search to access self-service content
• 85% of site searches don't return what the user sought
• 80% of visitors abandon a site if search functionality is poor
• 22% of site searches return no results
  
  
• 29% of CEOs/CIOs said it is difficult to find information to make company-wide decisions, 40% of senior managers reported the same
• Knowledge workers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information to do their jobs – and when they find it it is often wrong
  
  
• As much as 10% of a company's salary costs are wasted on unproductive searches
  

Customer (and staff) view

• Speed - If it's not fast, I won't use it
• Relevance - If I don't find it first time, I will go elsewhere

Google's trends...

• Focus on 'answers' not 'results'
• Building connectors (native support for over 100 connections)
• Multimedia search done right
• Compliance and archiving search
• Federated search (hook search together across different systems)

Technical Overview and Case Studies
ATO website – people can now find information on the website, users gravitating to search as the first path for navigation, rather than menus – huge increase in search.

Presenter: Aaren Tebbutt - Account Manager, HEDLOC

• Can integrate search across platforms, delivering a search across websites, file servers and databases.
• Supports unlimited collections across subsets of content
• Can suggest best bets and search narrowing terms
• Secure results are not presented to unauthenticated users

DEEWR

• Wanted faster and more relevant result for their document management repository
• Integrated security – presented results that were 'search only' – could not see a snippet or have a link
• Can use metadata to refine search – and display metadata in results

Extras

• OneBox module – can get results from applications and database systems, sent back as XML and integrated into search results. Used to integrate contacts information into a single set of search results. Also works for maps and other content.
• Search as you type function – suggest results as people type

Destination Geospatial
Presenter: Mickey Kataria - Google maps Product Manager, Google

Mission: 'Organise the world's geographical information and make it universally accessible and useful'

• Google maps is no. 1 most trafficked mapping website (including in Australia, US, UK, NZ)
• Acquired Maps from an Australian product in 2004, integrated with 'Keyhole' for Google Earth – another company acquired by Google.
• Google Maps APO – embed a fully customisable, interactive (or static) map into any webpage
  

Features

• Street View
• Driving Directions
• Geocoding
• Static Maps
• Javascript or Flash versions of interactive maps

Maps API - Premier version

• Contract/SLA
• Support
• Opt-in options for ads
• HTTPS support
• Advanced geocoding
• Larger static maps
• Usable internally (within a firewall)

Maplets

• Share your data back into google maps, for example,
  Australian Electorate map for Federal election
  UK Metropolitan police crime map – http://maps.met.police.uk

Mobile

• Maps on phone, static maps API, Javascript maps API
• Map Kit – native API for iPhone

User-generated content

• MyMaps – create your own map (plotting points, sharing, collaboratively editing)
• MapMaker – create maps where they don't exist
• Editing listings – add a business, move a location

Google Earth
Presenter: Brian Atwood - Google Earth Enterprise Product Manager

• More robust and full-featured than maps
• Government a major GID user, Google earth provides a single interface to aggregate all this data
• Two components,
  1. All data goes into Google Earth Fusion Software – processes and blends it together
  2. Processed data goes to Google Earth Server which allows viewing of data in a 3D or 2D format
• Visual clearing house for data, viewable by those who are given access
• Fast, easy-to-use and low cost
• Works with and is complementary to existing GIS systems
  

Examples:

• DC GIS – crime and other data
• New York Dept of Transport – travel, accident and crisis info
• Department of Homeland Security Earth – iCAV – crisis info, hurricanes, floods, etc
• US Forest Service – GPS tracking of planes in real-time
  

Case study - Virtual Alabama

• Needed an 'affordable, scalable, maintainable' system to visualise state asset imagery and infrastructure data

• Initiative started by Governor in 2005
  
  
• Video – Virtual Alabama 'common operating picture for state of Alabama', full case study is on Youtube (will add link later)

Goals

• Common operating picture and situational awareness (everyone sees same data)
• Right people have right data at right time
• Increase efficiencies in data usage, reduce costs
• Very easy to use
• Able to handle terabytes of data quickly

Implementation

• Began project in June 2006, Initial release in August 2006, all 67 counties by Nov 2007
• 550 Agencies now using it
• 2,100 total users + growing

Case study - Energy Australia
Presenter: Lawrence Bolton, Manager Community Liaison and Infrastructure

In his area

• 4,500 substations
• 5,000 distribution centres
• 11,000 distributors
• Need load monitoring to prevent substations getting overloaded
• Huge infrastructure program over next 5 years $8B to replace aging equipment
  

Wanted a way to 'see' or 'visualise' data

Google Earth is being rolled out in pilot as the visualisation platform for their GIS data, using layers and rich information.


Case Study - Australian Federal Police
Presenter: James Harris - Team Leader Geospatial services, Information Services Australian Federal Police

• Over 50 GIS Apps
• Most in specialist hands
• Silos of data and solutions
• Little or no succession plan
• It was a 'cottage industry'
  

Audited systems:

• Found 30 GE Pro Installations
• 300+ GE installations - potential licensing issues, Google gave them an amnesty to fix
• Dec 08, over 1,000,000 hits on maps.google.com.au per month – increasing 400% or 800% per year
  

Selected Google Earth via a tender process, and are implementing an internal version so no-one external is aware of when the Federal Police have interest in a location. Initially using 8 terabytes of storage – with multiple globes.

Initial role out in April to testers, full rollout in June.

Looking to roll out maps, live feeds, custom build tools, link into corporate databases in future.


Case Study - NT Land Information Systems
Presenter: Phillip Rudd - Director NT Land Information Systems

Geospatial useful for key questions

• Where did it happen?
• What else is around there?
• Is there a pattern over time/space?

Uses Google Earth alongside other tools (complex system - but it works well).

Department was gathering lots of map data, but could not effectively do much with it.

Originally deployed solution in production in 2006.

Emergency Management – 239 registered users
Land Information – open to all users (potentially 9,500 desktops) actual 1,619 logins

'We all think in pictures, not in words'

Uses:

• Counter terrorism and Emergency management
• Spatial Searching
• Automated mapping

Destination Apps and Security
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

Why are users unhappy?

• better tools at home than at work

Stats on current IT management

• IT organisations spend 80% of their budget on Maintenance
• 68% of organisations experience 6+ data leaks every year
• 60% of the average agency's Intellectual Property is trapped in email
  

Forrester report Jan 2009 – should your email live in the cloud?

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What's in a name? Choosing the best web addresses for government

The other day I absentmindedly typed in 'victoria.gov.au' to go to the Victorian state government's main site.

However I was surprised when my browser threw up an error, saying there was no such site.

I realised my mistake, it should have been vic.gov.au instead, however this got me thinking about all those people in Australia and overseas who would expect to type 'victoria' to find Victoria, rather than 'vic' and not have the experience that I do to find the right location.

I did a check on other states, from Western Australia to New South Wales, and found that in every case the state abbreviation was the only address accepted to get to the state portals.

In every case I received an error like this one (for tasmania.gov.au):



Given the small cost of registering another .gov.au address and pointing it to the same location, would it not make sense to register tasmania.gov.au, victoria.gov.au and the rest rather than take the risk of people getting it wrong and being directed to the wrong website by their web browser?

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US satisfaction with egovernment services rising

The US government has recorded the second consecutive increase in satisfaction, to an average 73.5 percent in the latest E-Government Satisfaction Index, part of the broader American Customer Satisfaction Index (private sector website satisfaction is at 80 percent).

As reported in CRM Buyer, 25 percent of sites achieved a rating over 80 percent.

The feature constituents were least satisfied with was navigation (37 percent were satisfied), whilst 96 percent were satisfied with search functionality.

Commentators are expecting the upward trend to continue as a result of the ongoing US financial crisis.

This upward trend will likely continue, Freed [Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results] said, if for no other reason than current budgetary constraints. With the U.S. government now committed to a US$700 billion financial rescue plan, money will be tight in all other categories. "E-government can deliver a huge payback because it is so much more efficient," he observed.

Type rest of the post here

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Should the government provide online services where competitive commercial sector services exist?

In the past it has been the practice for many governments around the world to avoid playing in the centre of commercial spaces, where competitively priced services are already provided by private businesses.

Government interventions in these markets are managed through legislation and direct intervention as a last resort (in cases of market failure) - as we are seeing in the current financial crisis in some countries.

The philosophy behind this approach is often that in markets where the private sector is willing to provide goods or services, competing on price, options and customer service, it is less likely that a government can add the same level of value.

Instead government concentrates on the 'margins' - situations where people are unable to afford or access the mainstream private sector services.

This, in essence, is how the public housing and unemployment benefits systems function. In both cases there are private sector options (private rentals/home purchase and jobs), while governments provide safety nets for citizens unable to access these alternatives.

Should government follow a similar approach online?

Looking at the online world, the costs and barriers to providing information and services have declined, broadening the range of services that may be offered by private enterprise.

Reflecting this, should governments follow the same philosophy of avoiding playing in commercial spaces, again only focusing on marginalised citizens?

Or should government provide public alternatives to existing commercial services?

This is a big - and highly political - question, which can be seen by the Commonwealth government's stance on internet filtering. While there are many commercial products available (from retailers, ISPs and online) including both charged and free services, the government is pursuing an approach of providing its own products, licensed from commercial providers, to ensure availability.

Similarly, should government provide 'web infrastructure' tools such as geospatial services, when large commercial organisations are already providing these services?

Geospatial services are a case in point.
We've seen the WA and QLD governments roll out their own public geospatial services specifically for their own state use, with the Commonwealth soon to follow suite at a national level via the AGOSP program.

These services provide similar functionality to both Microsoft and Google maps, and in fact Perth's public transit authority has its timetables available in a Google maps beta (but not in the state's own geospatial service).

Equally, for search, the Commonwealth government licenses the FunnelBack search technology, designed in Australia by the CSIRO, for use in Australia.gov.au and other sites (including the CSA website) rather than implementing Google's free service, as the US government has done.

In both these cases governments have followed a competitive tendering process to select the technology that best met their documented needs. The solutions are also under the control of Australian governments, rather than being owned and operated by foreign owned companies.

However, as demonstrated by Sensis this month, as reported in the SMH's article Sensis concedes defeat to Google, sometimes where the market is going is also important.

Sensis is discontinuing its Yellow Pages search and maps technologies. It will instead rely on Google to provide both services. As Google search was reportedly used by more than 7 million Australians per month, rather than the 184,000 who used Sensis's search engine there's clear commercial reasons why Sensis would want to stop sinking funds into trying to keep up with Google and instead leverage Google's audience.

Is this a valid choice for government?
Rather than custom developing or tendering for services that copy publicly available (and generally free) online services, should government agencies 'piggyback' instead?

This is a hard question to answer. Various Australian government agencies already piggyback on publicly available services - such as MySpace, SecondLife, Youtube and Google Maps.

On average Australian government websites get 25 percent of their traffic from Google search (based on Hitwise's statistics) - far outweighing the level of traffic from the central state or Commonwealth gateways.

On this basis, Australian government is already piggybacking on publicly available commercial services - and highly effectively.

However when introducing its own internet filters, customised geospatial services or search tools, Australian government is choosing to not piggyback - taking on the burden of building usage and investing in the ongoing development of new features to remain current with the commercial market.

I'm not about to venture an opinion on whether or not governments should follow this route, these decisions may be made for reasons of national security, flexibility or specific public needs.

However the options should be carefully considered by the initiators of these projects.

The decision to 'go it alone' needs to take into account the competitive landscape.

What alternative services are available for citizens - which do online audiences already prefer and why?
Why should citizens choose the government alternative and will the government's service deliver the outcomes citizens desire?
Is the government prepared to invest in continuous development? Or will the service fall behind commercial alternatives?

Without a full consideration of these factors, like Sensis's failed mapping and search service, these government offerings may not, in the longer-term, deliver the benefits desired.

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Locating and learning about future public employees using social networks

I am a reasonably active LinkedIn user (view my profile here).

It's one of my professional networking tools for keeping track of 'people of interest' to me - from business contacts to potential employees and employers.

It, and similar social and professional networks, are also useful recruiting tools for managers and HR professionals seeking to find or screen job applicants.

This isn't news to US HR teams. A recent survey by Careerbuilders.com, as reported in Reuters, found that 22 percent of hiring managers screened applicants via social networks.

From the article, One in five bosses screen applicants' Web lives: poll, of the managers screening applicants, 24 percent found information that solidified their decision to hire, while 34 percent found information that made them drop the candidate from the short list.

I also tend to Google people before making short-listing or hiring decisions (or when hearing about or meeting them professionally). It helps me build context and understanding and it draws on publicly available information (provided by the person in question), so there are no privacy considerations.

In terms of the full hiring process, for HR professionals and managers the online channel doesn't replace resumes, selection criteria and interviews, but it can certainly supplement this process by adding depth.

And for anyone seeking a new job, it is worth reviewing what you've said about yourself online - to ensure that you are representing yourself professionally.

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Why you should pay attention to intranet search logs

My team keeps a close eye on what people search for in our intranet.

It helps us identify patterns in staff behaviour and better support their needs.

In browsing for other online information, I came across a case study from 2006 about a government agency which provides a similar picture of the value of paying attention to intranet search logs.

It's worth a look at Intranet searching: popular search topics. A case study by Maxine Armitage.

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Improving an intranet staff directory

My team has been throwing around approaches for improving our internal agency staff directory on the intranet to make it more of a knowledge resource for staff.

As this is the most used tool in our intranet (people need to contact other people), improving the service contributes measurably to our staff's capacity to collaborate and discover the information necessary in their roles.

The more we can streamline people discovery, the more time we can save staff.

Thus far discussions have focused on our own experiences across a number of online staff directories over the years.

For my contribution to the discussion, from my experience over a twenty year span, the first staff directories were based on the paper phone directories used before intranets were common - alphabetical lists of names, titles, teams and phone numbers, divided by region or area.

These lists - and intranet directories - were useful in finding a known person, were you could identify their name and area.

However they had more difficulty in locating unknown people - subject matter experts - as area and team names did not always reflect their activities and without knowing who to contact it was hard to find an appropriate name.

Also traditional staff directories are only name, number and rank - they do not provide details on skills, relationships or communities, which help link people collaborate more effectively.

Therefore I've described three cases I want our future staff directory to cover.

1) Locating details for known people

• Finding contact details and physical locations (the basics of a directory)
• Discovering the skills, subject matter expertise, internal networks and communities of these people (a profile-based approach to help staff broaden their engagement with others)
• Placing these people in the organisation structure (via a dynamic organisational chart - therefore enabling staff to identify substitutes and managers when people are absent)

2) Locating experts

• Ability to search on skills, topics or networks to find people with the expert knowledge required (the experts might be unknown to the searcher, or known people for whom the searcher was unaware they had this expertise)

3) Engaging networks of knowledge

• Ability to search for networks of people sharing specific skills or subject matter expertise, in order to link in with them to form formal or informal Communities of Practice

As part of these cases, we're considering Facebook and LinkedIn style features, such as,

• staff profiles, to provide staff with the opportunity to humanise their listing and be more visible as an expert in their field
• optional staff photos (so you can identify with a person when calling or emailing, or recognise them when first meeting)
• linking of skills, topics and interests, so that clicking on a word provides details on other staff who have indicated similar expertise or knowledge
• Listing affiliations, to internal project teams and other formal and informal networks or communities within the organisation, to assist the formation of Communities of Practice and to build staff engagement with the agency.

Involvement in all of these areas would be optional, allowing staff to better self-manage their privacy. However, as in any situation involving information sharing, you get greater value when you share than when you silo knowledge.

Over time this approach lends itself to integration with collaboration tools, forums, wikis, groups and blogs, as well as team-based tools such as group calendars and mailing lists.

We've been looking online for reference material on the topic of staff directories, drawing on the experiences of a number of private sector organisations who have implemented similar types of directories.

A couple of the resources we've found useful include,

• Intranet Life: The potential of the staff Directory...
• Step Two: Staff directories benefit from cross-linking
• Step Two: Online staff directories: survey results and key findings
  
• and this video from Shel Holzman on Web 2.0 in the workplace

I'm very interested in the experiences of other government and private sector organisations in this space - so drop me a comment if you have suggestions to add.

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Facebook for US intelligence forces launching this month - time to revisit a whole-of-government intranet?

A-Space, an online collaborative space for US intelligence operatives, is planned for launch this month, giving all 16 US intelligence agencies a streamlined and effective tool for sharing information and collaborating - activities that have been criticised as previously lacking across US intelligence initiatives.

As reported in FCW.com, in the article, A-Space set to launch this month, after logging in,

analysts will have access to shared and personal workspaces, wikis, blogs, widgets, RSS feeds and other tools. To log in, analysts will need to prove their identity using public key infrastructure, and their agencies must list them in the governmentwide intelligence analyst directory.

Like many social-networking sites, each analyst will create an online personal profile, and colleagues can see what others are working on and the A-Space workspaces that they are using. In addition, much like Facebook, users can also post notes on one another’s profiles

The A-Space social network will include a search tool and data sets from six agencies at launch, with more to be progressively added.

We've seen several other western jurisdictions introduce cross-agency or whole-of-government intranets (such as Singapore), and there was a commitment made in Australia to establish a whole-of-government intranet by the end of 1998, which never came to fruition.

Perhaps it is time to revisit this.

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Use the right online metrics for the job

One of my mantras in professional life is 'you can't manage what you don't measure'.

Therefore it always worries me when I encounter organisations or individuals with a less than firm grasp on how to measure the success or failure of their online properties.

Depending on the type of web property, different metrics are most important for regular tracking and I believe it's the responsibility of top managers to understand the online metrics they use - just as they need to understand business ratios or balance sheets.

After more than twelve years of trial and error, below are the metrics I most and least prefer to use to track different types of online media.

What are the best metrics to use?
Standard websites
Visits
This tracks the total number of visits by users to a website over a period of time (month, week, day). This can include the same unique visitor returning to the site multiple times - which is the same way calls are commonly tracked for call centres.

Visits gives you an overall view of website traffic and, when divided by Unique visitors, provides a measure of 'stickiness' - how often people return to your site.

Note that for an unauthenticated site, a visitor is essentially an IP address, a computer. As multiple people can use a single PC, or a single person can use multiple PCs and it also may track search spiders and other bots, visits doesn't provide a perfect measure of human traffic but it's sufficiently good for trend analysis over time.

In addition, caching by ISPs or organisations can also influence visits - reports based on AOL from a few years ago indicate that visits reports may under report website traffic by as much as 30 percent due to caching - though this is less important today.

In comparison 'readership' is a much looser metric, but is often held in high regard in the print trade.

Unique visitors
Unique visitors tracks the individual IP addresses used to visit a website and as such provides a rough count of the number of actual users of a site, no matter how many times they visit.

This equates to 'reach' for a site - with growth in unique visitors indicating more people are coming to a website.

This is affected by the same IP versus human issue as visits, however is again still far more accurate than 'readership' figures provided by the press or 'viewer' figures provided by TV and radio - which are based on a sample rather than a population (as unique visitors is).

Pageviews
Pageviews are a more specific measure of the views of specific pages within a website, and is most useful for tactical website tracking, allowing the identification of high and low traffic pages and the impact of different navigational or promotional approaches.

Looking at pageviews also provides a psychological view of your audience's top interests - allowing you to quickly prioritise content to be expanded and which can be downplayed.

Pageviews is becoming less important as technology cocktails such as AJAX are more widely used to load part of a page's content automatically or in response to user actions. In these cases a single pageview may not track what the user views in the page.


Authenticated website (transactional services)
Active users
Active users tracks the actual use by authenticated users (real humans) in a time period.

This is the best measure of an authenticated site's success as it tells you how well you've encouraged ongoing use of a website, rather than simply how good a job you've done at getting people to sign up.

Many authenticated sites prefer to talk about Registered users as this is a much larger number, however if a user has registered but never returns, your organisation gains no value from it.

A low ratio of active users to registered users can indicate site problems, and should prompt website managers to ask the question why don't people come back?

Transaction funnels
Transaction funnels track the completion of transactions step-by-step in a service - and isn't necessarily only for authenticated sites.

This provides a website manager with tactical insights into any issues in a transactional process (or workflow), allowing them to diagnose which steps have the greatest abandonment rate and redevelop the process to improve completion.

Generally improving transaction funnels results in more transactions and more active users, which means greater utilisation of the service.


Multimedia (video/audio/flash)
Views
For any type of rich media, the number of views of the media is critical in determining success. However it has to be weighted against the Duration of views to determine if users spent long enough viewing in order to take away the message, or just viewed the first few seconds.

Duration of views
The duration of media views is a more granular measure of the effectiveness of the presentation - tracking whether the media actually communicated its message to users.

Looking at the average duration viewed, compared to the actual duration of the media (where such exists) provides a very strong effectiveness measure.

Shares
One of the keys with the success of media content is how much it is shared with others online - the word of mouth factor. For media with a 'refer to a friend' tool, tracking the use of this will provide a strong indication of how positively users view the material, and therefore how viral it will become. Media that is rarely shared is probably not getting the message across in a memorable way, whereas highly shared material is correspondingly highly memorable - at least for a short time.

Documents (pdf/rtf/docs)
Views
Often 'downloads' is used to track documents. Personally I prefer views as there are some technical issues with tracking downloads of files such as PDFs. In effect the two measures should be identically, but as PDFs, and sometimes other documents, download by segment, they can significantly overreport downloads (which becomes almost as useless as 'hits'), whereas views is a more accurate measure.

There are ways to fix this within reporting systems - which I've largely done in my Agency's system - however this is not possible in all systems.

Social media
Activity by user
Like authenticated sites, the goal of social media is to encourage participation - whether it be forum posts/replies, wiki edits or social network updates/messages.
Each of these represents activity - which may need to be tweaked by the type of social media.

The more activity by users, the more engaged they are with the site and the greater the prospects of longevity.

Views
The other useful measure is views, measuring the passive involvement of users with a social media site. Not all users will actively post, however if they return regularly to view, they are still engaged to some extent with the site.

Commonly the breakdown between active and passive participants is divided as 1/9/90 (Very active/active sometimes/passive observer), however in practice this varies by medium and community.

While that 90 percent doesn't add to the content of the site, they are vital for the other ten percent to participate.


Search
Top searches
Search is also an important area of sites, with the top searches providing another insight into what people want from your site - or what is not easily findable in other navigation.

Tracking this over time provides another perspective on the psychology of your website users. It helps you understand their terminology for navigational purposes and can help prioritise the content you should modify or add to in the site.

Zero results
Any search terms which result in zero results in your site should be looked into as a high priority.

Generally this reflects areas where your website lacks content or uses the wrong context or different language to the audience.


What are the wrong metrics?

Hits
Probably the least useful metric of all time, Hits is still the best known measurement for websites, despite having no practical business uses.

Hits measures the number of files called from a web server, with each separate file accounting for a single 'hit' (on the server).

On the surface this doesn't sound so bad - however webpages consist of multiple files, with the base page, style sheets, graphics and any database calls or text includes each accounting for a separate hit.

A webpage might consist of a single file, or it might consist of 20 or more - meaning that there is no clear relationships between hits and actual page views or user visits to a website.

To increase the number of hits to a website it simply requires the website owner to place more file calls in the page - potentially calling extremely small (1 pixel square) images, therefore hits can be easily manipulated with no effect on the actual number of website users.

So while hits figures are frequently impressive, even for small websites they can easily reach millions each month, they don't provide any useful business information whatsoever.

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What's next for your agency's search tools? Google testing user rated search

Some readers may be aware of Digg, a site where the users vote on news stories and those with the most votes get listed on the homepage.

It's an approach based on a news site's users knowing more about what they want to see than the professional news makers - and it has been relatively successful to-date (valued north of US$100 million).

Google has been testing similar features, allowing individuals to rate search results and make comments, then in future searches only see the results they prefer.

This would also be an interesting feature within websites and intranets, providing a human way to validate the search acronyms in use and ensure that the most relevant result - as determined by a person - is displayed at top.

Now this is still in 'bucket' testing at Google - meaning that a small select group of their users get to see the function. However TechCrunch has provided a video on what users see and how the system works.

Take a look below, or read the article Is This The Future Of Search?



Can you see uses in this for your website or intranet?

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The relevance of search (and how to improve your rankings)

Search, search, search - it's been a popular topic for years but most people I talk to still only pay lip service to ensuring that their website is appropriately findable on the web, or that their own website and intranet's search tools work effectively.

With the large number of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies around, it can be difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and personally I've avoided using any of them at all.

However I do spend a lot of time thinking about search. It is important for my agency that our customers can find us online. It's even more important that they can find relevant content when they reach our site.

So how important is it to rate well in search engines?
The graphic below (courtesy of RSS Ray), is derived from accidentally leaked AOL search statistics from Google searches in 2006 and provides an insight into the relevant importance of the top ten search terms in a results page.

The first search result in Google accounted for over 42 percent of clicks through to the AOL site, with the 2nd and 3rd results counting for another 20 percent.

After this the share drops rapidly. In total, 89.82 percent of clicks were from the first page of search results.












Source: What a top google search ranking means to your bottom line - the value of search engine optimisation


So clearly being at the top of search results is extremely important if you want to attract attention, and you do not want to be out of the top ten results.

For intranets it's also a productivity tool. If staff can find information faster it means they can complete their task faster. If your agency sees 60,000 searches per month and can save 5 seconds of scanning results for each search, that equates to a saving of 83 hours per month - or 1,000 hours per year. That adds up.


For which terms do you want to be findable?
It's fine to search for your organisation's name (and acronym) and find it is at the top of a search engine's results. That's quite common for government agencies because of how results are weighted. In fact if you are not the top result for your own name you do have a major issue to address.

Common search behaviour is task-based, not category or organisation based.

Most people don't think 'I need to get rental support' and then search for 'Centrelink'.
They look for 'rental support'.

Therefore your organisation needs to place well for all tasks and services for which your customers might search you.

Think of all the services your organisation provides and test them in Google, how well does your organisation rate?


Ways to boost rankings
Once you've established how well you rank the next step is how to improve rankings.

There are a number of simple ways to do this without involving specialist consultants or questionable tactics.

The first step is to ensure that the text on your pages contains the appropriate keywords high in the page, and in titles and subheadings as appropriate. If the page is about rental assistance, then make sure it is titled 'Rental assistance' and mentions this again in the first paragraph.

The second step is to ensure the page HTML code uses appropriate tags for headings and subheadings. Most search engines treat a <> as more important than text that is simply 18pt and bold, and so on down the chain.

Also ensure that appropriate ALT tags exist for images (except for decorations). These also assist search engines understand the subject of the page and its contents.

Next, make sure that links throughout your site are well-formed. Any linking to the rental assistance page should include 'rental assistance' in the link, not simply 'click here' or another meaningless phrase. This also ensures the links are WCAG compliant.

You should also check that appropriate meta data is in place - this is not that important for search engines these days, but is still within your control to influence.

Finally, make sure that you have put a Google sitemap in place. This helps Google know which pages are most and least important in your site and how often they should be 'spidered' or reviewed by the search engine.


It also helps to have other people link to your organisation's site - with appropriately named links - however this is less under your control and link swaps are generally only beneficial when swapping with an organisation with a high level of trust - such as another government department.

What about website and intranet searches?
Much the same philosophy applies to website and intranet search - people are likely to click on the top results, so it is in an organisation's interest to ensure that the link they want people to click to is at the top - it saves time and frustration and can have a direct (positive) impact on productivity.

You also have ways to influence the search order by tweaking the search engine - possibly by setting up 'best bets', 'feature pages', 'like terms' or by adjusting how the tool weights different aspects of the page (meta data, headings, content, links, etc).

These vary so widely between search tools that it's hard to provide a basic approach.

We use feature pages in our website search, for instance for calculator searches, where a featured result appears at the top.

In our intranet we also use spelling correction and synonyms to help people find the right pages, and recently introduced category-based searching. I'll blog more on that after our next intranet satisfaction survey.

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Do you monitor your Wikipedia entry?

I keep an eye on my agency's Wikipedia entry to make sure the information it contains is timely, factual, apolitical and objective.

Where possible I try to edit it as little as possible, allowing the community of Wikipedia to determine what is relevant in the entry - we have our own website for detailed information.

So why bother with Wikipedia?
I see managing our Wikipedia presence as a plank in our agency's overall communications strategy. If someone searches for us online I want to ensure that the same factual message is being communicated from any websites we can influence.

Wikipedia is particularly important as it is the most popular website we have the capacity to influence.

It's one of the top ten websites in the world and also a top ten site for Australia users.

While universities may not regard it as a primary reference source, it is in widespread use by Australian children for research purposes. In fact my children were taught at school how to research online using Wikipedia. Which site will they continue to use in ten years?

Below is a comparison from Alexa on the ranking of Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and Australia.gov.au based on overall internet traffic. Australia.gov.au doesn't perform this badly if only looking at Australian traffic, but Wikipedia performs just as well.

There's an overall list for Commonwealth government here, the text in red represents government bodies without a Wikipedia entry at all.

Interestingly the list is open to anyone to edit - and it does not have an importance ranking (which defines how much attention is paid to the accuracy of the content).

I've had a quick look around at the Wikipedia entries for other departments and agencies and there's enormous variation in the quality and comprehensiveness of their entries - where they have entries.

How does your department or agency review and maintain its Wikipedia entries?

• AGIMO - Australian Government Information Management Office
• Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
• Attorney-General's
• Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Australia Tax Office
• Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
• Centrelink
• Child Support Agency
• Climate Change
• CSIRO - great entry!
• Defence
• Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
• Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
• Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
• Finance and Deregulation
• Foreign Affairs and Trade
• Health and Ageing
• Human Services
• Immigration and Citizenship
• Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government
• Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
• Medicare - great entry!
• Prime Minister and Cabinet
• Resources, Energy and Tourism
• Treasury
• Veterans' Affairs

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Sneak peak at Google Ad Planner

Last week I discussed how Google was preparing to announce the release of it's new Ad Planner tool.

It's now available in beta with selected Google customers and an Ad Planner sneak peak is available online, with an image of the interface which demonstrates how the tool can segment site reach by demographics including gender, age, education, location and income.

The tool enables marketers and PR professionals to get a clearer picture of the demographics of different websites to aid them in effective communications and advertising targeting.

It also enables effective planning of online media buys, either through setting reach goals or media mix.

Does this remove the need for media buyers?

Certainly not yet - however I believe Google is gradually disintermediating this group as it moves further into television, radio and print advertising alongside its online search cash cow.

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Review: Funnel Back''s new search feature - Flusters

To provide a little background, Funnel Back is a search technology developed and commercialised by CSIRO.

It has been deployed in Australia.gov.au as their Whole-of-Government search technology as my agency's website search tool (as a hosted solution) and in many other agencies and companies across Australia and other countries.

It's a reasonably good search engine if some time is spent configuring it and I've been happy with the search success levels we achieve (though always trying to improve them).

AGIMO recently invited my agency to participate in the live pilot test of Funnel Back's new search feature - Fluster (50kb PDF).

In brief Fluster helps users find what they are looking for by offering alternative phrases to refine their search terms.

An example of this in action is visible in Australia.gov.au - simply use the search and look at the Related Search area at the right of the page.

We've been trialing this feature within our site for a little over a month now and I have an initial view on how Fluster has been performing.


How Fluster is doing
Initially I was concerned about the relevancy of the topics and phrases that Fluster would choose to display. This hasn't proven to be an issue, Fluster is providing highly relevant results.

However I'm not convinced that people are using the tool effectively. We've seen no measureable change in the search success rate and I do not have evidence that visitors to our site are using the Fluster Related Search area when searching.

This could be an education issue. We currently present Fluster in the search results page without any form of help, meaning that our visitors are not guided to the tool.

It could also reflect that improvements are necessary in the reporting of Fluster use so we can determine if the tool is assisting people find what they need. These reports are still being refined by Funnel Back.

Another factor I keep in mind is the trend towards more sophisticated internet users.

A large proportion of people are very familiar with Google and other 'generic' search engines and have learnt to use phrases rather than individual words to increase the relevance of results.

In fact, the average length of a search term in Google exceeded four words at the end of 2007 - at least according to WebProNews which reports that People Are Finding More Words To Search With.

This means that people are already refining their own search terms, potentially reducing the value in having a search engine do it for them.

In conclusion
So my preliminary conclusion is that Fluster can add value to search results.

However more time will be required to really understand the impact it is having and test ways to help people use it effectively.

While internet users are becoming more sophisticated, this doesn't negate the value of Fluster. There are always new people coming into the user pool and even experienced users may on occasion find that Fluster suggests a topic or phrase that they had not considered but leads them to a relevant result.

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Google to release a web measurement tool to track target audiences

Google looks to be entering the market Hitwise and Neilsen are already competing in - audience tracking online, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Google to Offer a Tool To Measure Web Hits.

This differs from web log reporting in that it tracks website visitors across different websites to provide a behavioural picture of audiences by demographics.

I've used the Mosaic audience profiling tool within Hitwise to gain a good idea of whether my agency's site was effectively targeting the correct audience (it is) and to look at other websites with which we shared our audience.

This benchmarking has allowed us to identify appropriate press and magazine channels to target for communications activities, to identify websites that we may consider partnering with and to get a clearer picture of what our customers want and do to improve our publications and services.

It will be interesting to see how effective Google's service will be in the same area. With over 130 million unique visitors per day the organisation already has a wealth of data on what people do online and where they go.

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Google trends launched for websites

Google Trends is a great tool for tracking the ebb and flow of ideas, products and personalities in the public eye.

I've used it, for example, to track customer awareness of an agency name change - which gave my agency a good handle on the speed at which our communications was shifting perceptions.

This is important for comms people in government bodies changing names due last year's Federal election (such as FAHCSIA vs FACSIA)

Google has now launched Google Website Trends.

In the words of Google, A new layer to Google Trends

Today, we add a new layer to Trends with Google Trends for Websites, a fun tool that gives you a view of how popular your favorite websites are, including your own! It also compares and ranks site visitation across geographies, and related websites and searches.

What does that mean for you?
In other words, communicators can now track the level of community awareness of their brand over time aggregated by all the search terms used in Google to reach their website. The reports also provide insights into the search terms used, and the other sites visited by these people.

For example a trend on Centrelink demonstrates how popular searches on the baby bonus have been in driving traffic to the site.

This can also look at the impact of campaigns on driving traffic (via Google) to a new site over time - such as this trend on the Do Not Call website (looks like ACMA needs to rebuild awareness of this site).

Here's a comparison of searches for the ATO and Centrelink sites as an example of the tool in action.

How do you use Google Trends?

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When good websites turn bad

I've had a keen interest in the Attorney General's Department for a number of years now.

That's not because they may - or may not - be the government department most likely to have James Bond, Triple X or the Men In Black working for them.

It's because they do a lot of important things across a range of areas, but rarely seem to get much credit for it.

For example, while their name suggests a dry, boring legal portfolio - and indeed they do have a large role in the intersection between Australia's legal system and government - they are also responsible for developing emergency management systems and supporting emergency management services, which become pretty important to people when there is an earthquake, flood or other disaster.

They also look after the Family Relationship Centres, which play an enormous role in supporting families around the country and manage Comlaw, THE source for legislative information in Australia and Australian Law Online, equally the source for legal and justice related information.

That's not to mention counter-terrorism, or engagement with the justice systems across the Pacific.

These are all important and useful activities and would make the AG's Department a very interesting place to work.

But what have they done to their website?
The other day I visited the main AG's website for the first time in awhile and was surprised at what I found.

I have my views on attractive and usable web design and they don't match what the AG's Department has done to their site.

The URL icon in the web address bar is cute - a scale of justice, much clearer than using a Commonwealth crest which suffers at a 16x16 pixel size. Unfortunately this was also the high point for me.

The site is coloured a very bright orange, fading through to blue with black highlights. The crest is nicely positioned at a good size at top left, but doesn't blend well with the page - it sits on a solid dark background and has harsh lines separating it from the rest of the design.

The website homepage has more than 70 visible links, organised into topic area throughout the left half two-thirds of the website - basically exposing much of the site navigation, using up most of the visible area to do it rather than neat dropdown menus.

It does have a right-hand column with several news items, Ministerial links and a couple of publications.

However that left hand area with all those links! It doesn't make the site very attractive or usable, it's simply overwhelming!

I did go to the site for a specific purpose, but after one look at the homepage, I fled back to Google and searched for the content instead - finding it within seconds.

I think that many other users similarly overwhelmed with options would react in a similar way.

So what mistake has AG's made - the concept that if links are good, more links are better?
That a home page, being largely a navigation page, should simple be a list of links?

Certainly that was the peak of user design back in the mid-90s, when Yahoo launched with a groundbreaking list of lists, neatly categorised by type. But I do not see any of today's popular sites taking a similar approach - perhaps the world has moved on.

I'm sure the department had good intentions for this design and was aiming to making it easier for the many audiences that visit the AG's site, for many different reasons.

However I do not think the approach selected will maximise the utility of the site - and look out for that 'bounce' rate!

Bounce rate (From Google Analytics' definition)
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

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