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Friday, 24 July 2009

Swineflu: NHS #fail

Not only do we have a crashing website. Not only do we have a phone line four months late. We also have an #fail for how most people will seek information about swineflu online - search.



Mate Jack reports that he is #1 in Google result for 'have I got cold or swine flu'. Although the NHS is advertising on this search this isn't good enough because click through on text ads is very low.

NHS is #5 'natural' result - below my 'fold' on this search. They must also be optimising their site to appear at #1 in such results. But they have not.

Not. Good. Enough.

Either NHS online fixes this - quick, Google indexes pretty damn quickly - or they hire someone who can. Thousands, if not millions, of Brits will be looking for swine flu advice online via search NOW. If this is what they will see the NHS is #fail-ing them.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous24 July 2009 at 17:35

    They are 1st on these searches, who uses natural language queries on google these days anyway?

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=have+i+got+swine+flu&btnG=Search&meta=

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=have+i+got+swine+flu&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB

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  2. Paul Canning24 July 2009 at 17:49

    I should bloody hope so! A fuller exercise would show what the % is of those 'long tail' queries. I suspect it's quite high.

    natural language shows up in a lot in my stats. remember, most web users are very sophisticated

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