Fairfax is keeping its readers locked in the cellar
So who are Australia’s bad search citizens? Fairfax Digital Media – j’accuse.
I probably should explain. By bad citizen, I mean failing to contribute to the ecosystem of the blogosphere.
Now there’s a real danger that this sounds like a small player moaning about a big player, but in this case even news.com.au isn’t as bad as Fairfax.
What am I banging on about? External links. You’ll just about never see them from a Fairfax news story, no matter how relevant or helpful for the reader. I can think of a couple of reasons. First, if you offer links out, then you risk losing your user to something they find more interesting. And second, the somewhat more questionable theory that if you link outwards you’ll lose your magic Google juice.
To tackle the second point first, although never entirely transparent on the issue, Google’s genial search guru Matt Cutts has dropped some pretty hefty hints that if you link to quality or relevant pages, that will do you no harm at all.
So it really comes down to the risk of losing your user at the time.
And that’s where Fairfax seems to prefer to treat its readers a bit like a jealous man who tries to stop his girlfriend from meeting other men in the hope that this will protect the relationship. One Fairfax journo told me that the management “aren’t keen on linking outside”.
It’s a pity, because of course search engines like Google base their recommendations on who links where. When a giant publisher doesn’t play, it makes the online experience fractionally poorer for everyone than it would otherwise be. The recommendation engine of hundreds of Fairfax journalists is unavailable to the outside world.
This keep-your-girlfriend-locked-in-the-cellar approach was obvious when April Fool’s Day came. While news.com.au had a higher value (for the readers) roundup of what pranks had gone on in the blogsphere, with links to all of the ones mentioned (declaration of interest – including Mumbrella), the story on smh.com.au looked slapdash, with just three of them linked to. Then it dawned on me, the only ones that got a link were to Fairfax properties.
For readers who thought about it, it would be a display of bias, just the same as if the newspaper had written about Fairfax on its business pages in a partisan way. Not a good way to build trust.
But on Thursday of last week, smh.com.au made itself look truly idiotic. It ran a long piece on “mummy bloggers” – Australian women writing about parenthood. Mia Freedman’s mamamia blog was a major focus. But not a single one of the blogs mentioned were linked to. Which just looked weird or incompetent, as it had obviously decided, by running the piece in the first place, that they were worth telling readers about. With an item like that, it was utterly lame not to link to any of the sites it was writing about.
But this piece went even further – it finished with a message to readers promoting a site that hadn’t been mentioned in the article at all. It urged readers: “For more on parenting and pregnancy: www.essentialbaby.com.au” (I haven’t hyperlinked it, because I don’t think they deserve it, do you?). You’ve probably already guessed that this is a Fairfax site.
This all feels like a hangover from the days of print media competition. Better to be unhelpful to your readers than to give any kind of potential rival even the slightest leg-up.
But online, it just feels old fashioned, particularly when few of its digital-only rivals do it. Instead, the price of preventing people from navigating away at that moment is to make using the smh.com.au a marginally less useful experience than it otherwise could be. It also treats the users like idiots who won’t notice the walls around them. And it’s an approach that forgets that these days, everyone’s home page is Google anyway.
I’d love to know if any studies of bounce rate versus the quantity of outbound links have been carried out, but I’d be willing to bet that users keep coming back to the sites that offer them interesting links to other content, rather than trying to keep them locked in within their own network.
“Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.”
Or to put it in old fashioned language that Fairfax might understand:
“If you love somebody, set them free. If they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.”
Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella
Linkedin
Thanks for putting this out there Tim! As a fellow small player in the digital publisher community I also believe they should learn quickly how to play a bit fairer.
Their management team and media buyers could also learn a decent lesson from this strategy. Pushing traffic between their self owned sites (in content articles and footer links) is a shortcut to keep google happy and leads to unqualified UV’s.
Their so called youth portal http://www.thevine.com.au (note the full link) is a good example. A quick glance at their inbound google links http://tinyurl.com/cqn6zg shows there isn’t much real link love out their, but rather a lot of farifax digital sites with high page ranks linking in via irrelevant pages. For this site surely the strategy only leads to a stack of 50 year old men on the SMH coming across to the site tempted by links like “Top Aussie models” See for yourself in the SMH footer right now.
Fairfax perhaps if you shared the love and become a better digital citizen you would get some love back via real inbound links that produce qualified UV’s. Oh and they might click on the ad’s a little more too.
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You’ve done well in noting something more embarrassing in that Fairfax piece than the one I first spotted: the reference to traffic as “hits.” WTF is a hit exactly? I doubt given the public stats for the mamamia blog that it’s a reference to pages views for example.
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They are also recycling old stories from one paper to the other:
http://garryowensghost.blogspo.....cling.html
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Astute commentary Tim. Just go easy on the 50 year old men who read the SMH.
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Good article, Tim – i’d never really noticed this lack of link love from Fairfax but in hindsight I think you’re right. They never link to anywhere whereas news.com.au is more likely to.
@Stu: SMH and The Age do this all the time with stories written for the The Guide which is published on Mondays in the SMH, then they’ll republish the same article online on The Age to coincide with its regurgitation in the Green Guide on Thursday. Apparently we don’t notice this, although it would be helpful if Sydney-only references were taken out of the article when it gets recycled on The Age as I noticed on one of their Green Guide offerings.
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Interesting post Tim and a broad topic you could explore a lot further …
Hi Tim,
Others of us have noticed this as well and there’s been an ongoing discussion attempting to identify the actual date when the policy of no external links was introduced.
It’s devalued Fairfax’s brand and a number of people I know involved in social media have stopped using the papers as they do not provide the news we need (links and all).
Cheers,
Craig
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The lack of link love from newspapers in general is an enormous frustration. This reminds me of the Melbourne (The Age) Mag story about four food bloggers without even mentioning that they have blogs or the URLs.
Also while somebody is mentioning hits, most journalists – or people quoted – have no idea what they are talking about on web stats.
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Touché.
There’s no nefarious conspiracy to keep links within the network.
Disclaimer: I work at Fairfax Media in the Classifieds division as a SEO. I’m not directly involved with the News division (yet) but I can offer my personal perspective:
Do we discourage linking out externally? No.
Do we encourage linking to our network sites? Yes.
Here’s the usual process:
Journalists submit their stories.
It is then up to the editor’s discretion where to insert links.
When an editor doesn’t insert links there are two major reasons why: Time constraints and lack of education.
Firstly, our editors are few and we publish an incredible amount of stories every hour, every day. Inserting links is usually a “nice-to-have” rather than a “need-to-have”. Second, not all of our editors are as web savvy as you (and I) would hope.
To illustrate, our (savvy) bloggers link out constantly; eg. Valerie Khoo on our Enterprise blog: http://blogs.theage.com.au/ent.....busin.html
Music blogger Stephen Walker: http://blogs.theage.com.au/noi....._guit.html
Our technology editor also links out: eg. http://www.theage.com.au/news/.....49418.html
For the rest of our editors, they run the gamut of never-link-out to sometimes-link-out-if-I-find-the-time.
“With an item like that, it was utterly lame not to link to any of the sites it was writing about.”
Agreed, and the SEO team will be in contact with our editors to 1) encourage linking out where it is plain common sense and 2) make sure editors know the best practices when creating links.
I just wanted let you know the ‘keeping links within the network’ angle is incorrect 🙂
Regardless, it’s great to see Mumbrella keeping us honest, and as you can probably tell from your logs, there are quite a few of us at Fairfax reading your blog.
If you’d like to talk about this more, hit me up on Twitter @lucasng or via email.
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As a former Fairfax employee I’ve been watching their digital space for interest for a few years and I think they’ve started to go backwards somehow. They used to lead and be the innovator, and they had a great head start on the opposition, namely News Ltd, with a couple of years advantage back in the early days. But increasingly they are looking shaky with this kind of navel gazing approach yet another example. I think the focus at news.com.au and a number of other parties is way ahead now in terms of embracing the rest of the digital world. Fairfax is now stuck in a rut of producing the same old rubbish and ignoring the way the medium is progressing. Their video offering is abominable and they seem to have their heads stuck about six or seven years back where an audio slideshow of a disinterested photographer is considered top notch. Anyone else think there’s been a slide?
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Hi Lucas,
Thanks for that information. However, I do also have an email from a couple of months ago from a Fairfax journalist (who I won’t name) who, when I previously queried it, told me: “They aren’t keen on linking to outside blogs, unfortunately. ”
I see what you’re saying about the time-consuming element sometiems beign a barrier, and I do realise the pressure that web editors are under. But it doesn’t explain why in the example I mention, there have been three links inserted – all to Fairfax sites. Or why in the baby blogging feature a link had been inserted, again to a Fairfax site at the expense of the baby bloggers
So at the very least, it sounds there are mixed signals or policies internally.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I work as an online editor at Fairfax and there is no edict about linking only to Fairfax sites. I’ve written stories that link to other sites http://tinyurl.com/dx9n7h.
Lucas is right – it is a time issue.
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Hi Tim
You asked for further studies – this one is interesting, looking at the correlation between media websites linking out and getting backlinks. Evidence suggests there is a strong correlation:
http://www.seoco.co.uk/blog/20.....nking-out/
James Harris
news.com.au
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Hi Tim,
great article. I have always thought that it was perhaps lack of knowledge on behalf of journaliasts, but it seems to be a deliberate policy as you alluded to. (Sorry Lucas!)
Check out this article on Broome Tourism and pay particular notice to the links at the end of the article: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/h.....ml?page=-1
I think this is a really poor user experience and just leaves readers annoyed and frustrated.
Cheers
Kristi
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Kristi – i think that example is more laziness than anything. I’d say that’s a piece that originally ran in print that’s just been cut and paste into the CMS.
Not saying it’s not annoying/frustrating but I don’t think it’s intentional/deliberate.
Fair point Ben. Looking again, the transition from print to online is probably the culprit.
However, jumping over to the Tech section and reading the article on the Extreme Sheep herding video, I just couldn’t seem to find a link to the video…..
Maybe this is all one big coincidence!
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You’re looking for a conspiracy where none exists. Although I can’t speak for other Fairfax publications I know that the one I worked on actively encouraged reporters to file links with their stories. If they’re not getting up online then that’s Fairfax Digital at play.
The comment that eds had primary responsibility to put links on stories is in my long experience a fantasy. Sometimes subs would but the primary responsibility sat with the reporter (that’s not to say that eds wouldn’t just that they weren’t primarily responsible).
For those not in the “know” there is no one Fairfax. There is The Age, the SMH, Fairfax Digital, Fairfax Community Network and Fairfax Business Media. They mostly either hate or at best ignore each other.
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I think you will find that it is mainly the stories which come from print which don’t have the hyperlinks and this is purely because there is no mechanism to insert links when filing for print that will bring them across to online.
It’s a different matter for reports written first for online. And Tim, I’m guessing your Fairfax Deep Throat was a printie. There is no such policy in place. In fact, we are encouraged to link out. It’s just that the production process at night does not allow people the luxury of double-handling copy and inserting links.
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Hi digital gal, I’m not going to say which bit of Fairfax my source comes from.
But take a look at the two examples I gave above. In one of them there were a dozen potential links. Yet only three were inserted, dotted through the piece, and to the only three Fairfax sites mentioned.
In the other it’s an item about parenting blogs, which originally ran in print. I’d buy the argument that there’s no time in the process of putting the stories up to add links (I know how busy the overnight shifts are, yet on very small staffs) – except somebody has taken the time to add a link – to a Fairfax site not even mentioned in the piece.
Cheers,
Tim
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Where I work we sometimes quote and link to the media big boys in our stories.
We recently recevied a call from one of the media co’s (i won’t say who) insisting that EVERY TIME we quote them they needed us to link to them.
I laughed and asked them on what grounds do we ‘have to’ do it EVERY time.
They said it was just good business practise. As they quote us a lot too I said, ‘fine, we will if you will’
They declined and hung up.
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As an (related) aside, smh.com.au is now a PR9 site, up from PR8 not that long ago, which means, as far as Google is concerned, it’s up there with the New York Times and the Guardian. Weird, that’s all.
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Hey Tim
Yepo again. Our massive 100 Best Towns Coverage was linked by News and Ninemsn and everyone in between – but Fairfax, oh no.
And to make sure it is not just a print to digital conversation, they even obliterated our mastehad from their coverage so instead of Australian Traveller revealing the 100 Best Towns in Australia it was a panel of tourism experts and Australian Traveller mysteriously had nothing to do with it.
It’s the pettiness we, Nige and I, have come to love and respect form our former employers.
It has nothing to do with the fact they forgot to register travelandleisure.com.au before announcing their new and very increasingly costly venture to the market.
It took them 6 months to call me and then only to try and sue us and close us down. Thankfully their arrogance didn’t dissuade us.
The bloody incompetence of Fairfax is asotunding yet the marketers fall for it every time.
It will not last, no wonder everyone is selling down on Fairfax.
Cheers
Q
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Hi Quentin,
how are you? Apart from Fairfax linking problems! Have moved on from Expedia and did a bunch of travelling around Australia. Have to thank your magazine for some great tips!
Cheers
Kristi
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Anyone else want to say hello to their friends? Catch up on what old colleagues are up to? Feel free to do so here.
Perhaps we should start doing dedications…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Sorry Tim was in two minds as to whether to post, should have gone with my head! Please delete! 😉
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Hi Kristi,
I’m happy for people to use Mumbrella in whatever way they find helpful! So long as you don’t mind me teasing you afterwards…
Cheers,
Tim
Stop, all you conspiracy theorists – I also work online at Fairfax; we’ve always been encouraged to link out. The fact is that the new content management system they’ve been rolling out here this year has made it much harder to add links – both manually and automatically – apparently its a bug that’s going to be fixed.
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I agree with the general tenor about SMH links.
However, as an inveterate Letter to the Editor writer, I find the inability to comment on stories more annoying.
The vast majority have no feedback mechanism, and I still haven’t found the official Letters to Editor email link.
Much as one may disagree with Miranda Devine, she does reply to feedback (as does Peter FitzSimmons) but that is via their own email accounts. And even then neither have a comments section.
The Telegraph, on the other hand, has comments and feedback for virtually every story.
The ability to interact with stories is, I believe, the webs big advantage.
Cheers
Steve
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