what's a "reading score", brian?
Best
Cs
Sent from my iPhone
On 20 Nov 2009, at 12:55, "Brian Butterworth" <briant...@freeview.tv>
wrote:
2009/11/20 John O'Donovan <john.odono...@bbc.co.uk>
Thanks Mo, Hi Brian.
We thought long and hard about this, but basically we think it's an
improvement.
Surely the idea should be to demonstrate that something is an
improvement, rather than just changing it.
As I pointed out if you calculate the reading score for these longer
headlines, they score higher, meaning they are less good to those
(unlike ourselves) who have lower reading skills.
For higher skilled people, they just take longer to scan.
If you said it was for SEO, that would be fine. But for usability,
it sucks.
For example, this headline may be short, but what is the article
really
about?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7390109.stm
"Great tits cope well with warming"
That's just a fantastic headline.
As an example, I think for this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8369764.stm
"Procter & Gamble recalls 120,000 Vicks nasal sprays"
...is much clearer than...
"Thousands of Vicks spray recalled"
Especially if you don't know what Vicks is.
Why would I be interested in this story if I don't use the product.
I would suspect that MORE people don't know what a Procter & Gamble
is.
John O'Donovan
Chief Technical Architect
BBC Future Media & Technology (Journalism)
BC3 C1, Broadcast Centre, 201 Wood Lane, London
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk
[mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Mo McRoberts
Sent: 20 November 2009 11:57
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] BBC News - Googlejuice vs Usability
On 20-Nov-2009, at 11:45, Brian Butterworth wrote:
> Here's a nice little dillemma.
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/11/
changing_headlines.html
>
> BBC News headlines go from 33 characters (because of Ceefax) to 66
>
> One the one hand, king of usability Jacob Neilson has said the BBC
News headlines are the "world's best"
>
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/headlines-bbc.html
>
> On the other, Google likes lots of relevant keywords, the higher the
"reading score" the better in fact.
>
> It's not like BBC News comes bottom of any Google search, is it?
>
> My question - which is more important, SEO or usability?
Given the context: short headlines on the linking pages, longer
headlines on the pages themselves, I'd suggest it strikes a good
balance.
However, I can't stand the short headlines. Everything's phrased as
though it's a lie. Yes, I know the reasons, it still reads terribly,
no
matter what Neilson reckons. So in fact, I'd actually prefer to see
the
longer headlines all of the time (which does SEO no harm at all).
BBC headlines 'lengthened'.
M.
--
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