Straw Poll was Re: [LINK] Straw Pole of Good Bad and ugly online government services

[Adam Todd]

At 09:45 AM 19/01/2007, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
navy.gov.au redevelopment Talk:
>*sexy looking websites with people not boats is what the client is looking for

I thought the Federal Government was trying to censor sex on the Internet 
in Australia?  Now they want sexy people on the Navy web site?  Sheesh!

>Accessibility Talk:
>*most commonly misspelt word on Government websites is "Australia"

I think this is a Freudian Slap!

Lets face it, who wants to be known as from a Prison Colony!  I'll bet most 
spell it as Austria!

>Hitwise Talk:
>*Australia has over 5000 government websites
>UK around 1500 and the US around 3000!

That's because every Public Servant has to have a web site for their 
internal sub department.  (Linkers excused!)

I'll bet you can find more than 5000 :)

>*Most popular Aust government site is Bureau of Meteorology,

No surprise.  It's the one with the most useful things on it!  The Rain 
Radar!  Except most people don't know how to read it :)

>*Wikipedia is outdoing the other encyclopedia's...

Because everyone keeps talking about it, criticizing it so people want to 
see what the noise is about and it's easier to use :)


>*And no surprise for anyone that has looked at their own website stats...
>Google is by far the most popular website

Actually this is debatable.

docs.ajtodd.com receives thousands of referrals a month from YAHOO.  Only a 
handful are from Google.  I get a lot of referrals from NSW government 
internal web sites.  Apparently AJ's web site is part of the Department of 
Community Services training program.  The subject is about how to defeat 
and intimidate parents who stand up to questioning an DoCS officers beliefs 
in action.  Strangely they also use my video without my 
permission.  Had  quite a few people tall me they see the film and the raid 
video in their training courses.  I haven't licensed any part of the NSW 
Government or any person to use my copyright material for training purposes.


1,966       yahoo.com
1,555       google.com.au
1,523       inau.com
1,372       google.com
   406       justiceforfamilies.com
   293       nsw.gov.au
   281       inoz.com
   266       altavista.com
   188       ah.net


This may be because Google no longer indexes web sites by their content, 
but by how many links to their site they can find.  This of course provides 
problems.

I actually object to ranking and listing by "link" counting.  Who wants a 
home page that has a zillion links and no content on it?  The home page 
should be to the point and open the site, not provide the user with 90 
million links to things that link back.

Google has destroyed the function of Search Engines in that manner.

Again, another example where we have deliberately minimised linking to the 
Iconoclast web site, yet have regularly injected search links into Google 
to have it indexed.  We get rejected because we don't encourage too many 
inbound links.  Most are from "Industry" web sites and not indexed by Google.

Yahoo totally out ranks, and yet I've never submitted to Yahoo, nor have I 
encouraged it's listing.

  2,613       yahoo.com
  1,990       if.com.au
    680       google.com.au
    617       mandy.com
    229       msn.com
    217       altavista.com
    209       active.org.au
    205       google.com
    166       ninemsn.com.au






However, my personal web site has a different opinion:


1,083       google.com.au
   974       google.com
   356       yahoo.com
   297       altavista.com
   184       ninemsn.com.au
   176       anu.edu.au
   141       cynosure.com.au
    95       msn.com
    80       google.co.uk