UKTW vs The Panda

Ok, so I took my own advice and was patient, very patient, to see all the good things we’d done would have the desired effect on traffic and sales. Now, you might argue that we didn’t wait that long but, to be honest, it was getting difficult to see a way out. When we transferred about 70% of our traffic from UKTW to SeatChoice we saw an immediate improvement in SeatChoice traffic, but not to the extent that we’d damaged UKTW. Over the days and weeks that followed, the improvement to SeatChoice slowly fell away back to worse than previous levels and the UKTW traffic started a long slow recovery.

From this set of circumstances I formed the idea that seatchoice.com was somehow toxic in that whatever I did the overall traffic on that site never seemed to recover, indeed, any new traffic delivered to this site was pretty soon leached away somewhere else. And so, eventually, I came to the conculsion that I was flogging a dead horse (domain) and would never win. Questions asked on the Google Webmaster Forum got answers basically denying that such a thing as toxic domains might exist but I could see no other explanation.

And so I decided, after discussion with interested parties, to ditch the seatchoice.om domain and revert to uktw.co.uk which we have been running since the mid-1990s, which seems to have a great reputation and has been almost impossible to “damage”! A couple of late nights later I had a new clean design up on UKTW (moving it from a “slower than 70%” to a “faster than 68%” site!) and put in place the 301 redirects and edits to kick all the traffic from seatchoice.com to uktw.co.uk

Within a couple of days the loss of traffic on seatchoice.com was major (as expected) but the growth in traffic for uktw was even better – in other words not only did I move the traffic successfully but I picked up some new people en route! Checking some key phrases on several search engines we dropped from the SERPs for SeatChoice where we had been on pages 5 to 10 and arrived, immediately, on page 2 for UKTW … from nowhere! Now that’s impressive. Its only been 4 days or so and yet traffic is up, sales are up and, if this were to continue, the road to recovery would be visible at last! In fact, we’re already better placed for our important search phrases using UKTW than we ever achieved with SeatChoice in months of trying.

This was a hard decision but I think the right one. We are not dropping the SeatChoice brand, just making it a “service” within the UKTW listings – which is actually where it started a few years ago … perhaps we should have stuck with it that way from day 1 … live and learn.

The journey is not over yet, and we’re still deep in the woods .. but at least now I have found a small path …

Theatre Archive Databases and Searching

Recently, we moved the Arts Archive stuff back into UK Theatre Web (www.uktw.co.uk/archive)  and even more recently we moved “live” performances out of UKTW onto SeatChoice (seatchoice.com)  – all changes made with 301 redirects – thus making our world a slightly cleaner place .. if its on then its only at SeatChoice, if its ended then its only at UKTW …

Yes, those who have followed stuff here will realise that this was part of post-Panda tidying up rather than, necessarily, making things more user friendly None the less, this is what we did.

The immediate effect of the first move was, of course, Arts Archive traffic dropped to 0 and UKTW traffic climbed a bit. Befor ethe next change we let things stabilise.

The effect of the second change was that UKTW traffic immediately fell by 75% … however, despite the 301 redirect, the rise in traffic on SeatChoice was far less (that is to say, not all the people who didn’t end up on UKTW did end up on SeatChoice!) …

What has been even more interesting is that, since then, the uplift on SeatChoice has fallen away again and the drop on UKTW has started to recover …. this is not particularly logical but it is what is happening – in fact, traffic on UKTW has doubled since the change and is still climbing.

This all led me to decide to have a look around. I started at utrs.list-team.com, a small Theatre Website Chart loisting a couple of dozen UK theatre websites and their traffic. I noticed a few strange things

1. NewsOnStage.co.uk, which I also run, has shown improving traffic .. this is odd as it is unashamedly a simple RSS aggregator, i.e. there is not one single piece of original content on the site!

2. London Theatre Database traffic has started to grow again despite the fact that it says there is currently NOTHING on in London!

This second point got me to thinking about things and I did a Google search for [london theatre database] .. the results were

1. The London Theatre Database .. great

2. The British Theatre Guide mentioning London Theatre Database as at last someone has started a theatre version of iMDB well, guess what, The London Theatre Database has 5,500 archived shows, UKTW has 94,000 .. this page was last updated 2009

3.  The Theatre Trust .. lovely site

4.  The London Theatre Database trying to raise money on-line .. this appeal closed a year ago and didn’t reach its target

Then a mixture of useful sites … including one which claimed to be the largest collection of on-line performing arts info in the world (mostly Broadway and London) but it lists fewer venues in the whole world than we list in the UK and has but a fraction of our content.

So, what do I take from this? Basically two lessons …

1) I have done a really bad job over the years of promoting our archive

2) It seems that whatever I do the reputation of UKTW will recover and tat of SeatChoice will not

So… I must ponder these facts further …

Panda Pain and Anguish

Ahh well, looks like I spoke too soon.

October 14th saw another run of Panda, as far as anyone can tell, and there’s a lot of screaming and running around like headless chickens happening of the Webmaster Forum … seems like it hit a number of people hard

Like us

Yep, after a few months of slow growth we were kicked in the teeth … dropped 35% on one site overnight, dropped probably 50% across all sites … not sure how much longer I can keep this up

STAR kitemark for safer ticket purchasing

It is estimated that 10% of people in the UK have been affected by Ticket Fraud, a black industry which, online alone, is estimated to amount to around £168million per year!

With the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, the Metropolitan Police are concentrating on ticket fraud, both on-line and through more traditional routes (the street tout) but more needs to be done to make sure that users do not fall foul of the sophisticated scams out there.

To this end, STAR, the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, has launched a new kitemark to replace their old logo (see our previous BLOG entry to compare old and new) in order to give users confidence that they are buying from a safe supplier and will actually get the tickets that they pay for!

“It is the show of strength that the entertainment ticketing industry has been waiting for,” said Jonathan Brown, Secretary of STAR. “Ticket fraud is an industry-wide problem and we needed an industry-wide solution to tackle it head on.”  The kitemark is supported by major entertainment organisations such as the Concert Promoters Association, the National Arenas Association and The Society of London Theatre.

SeatChoice is operated by Dynamic Listing Ltd, an Affiliate member of STAR and we have always made it clear on our site when we are using STAR or non-STAR suppliers, including giving advice on safe use of the ticket reseller market – buy tickets safely through SteaChoice.

Why is Edinburgh the Funniest Place in the UK?

Quite simply because it is home to the biggest comedy prize in the UK: The Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

This year was as ever a huge year for comedy in Edinburgh, the Festival City was in full peacock mode; flashing its multiple festivals and discount theatre tickets available for all the locals and tourists to absorb like crinkly poncho wearing rabbits in a storm of multi-coloured firework inspired headlights. It is easily the biggest and best arts festival in the world and at its heart is a rich vein of pure comedy sniggering away behind the curtains of every beer soaked venue and champagne doused stage within the city’s ancient limits.

A Foundation for Ferociously Famous Funny Folk

The Edinburgh Comedy Awards have been in existence since 1981. It has been known as the Perrier Comedy Awards, the if.comedy Awards and now the Fosters Comedy Awards, and through all these years it has gracefully maintained its prestige and talent for unearthing supremely funny people. You might recognise past prize winners and nominees such as:

• Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery – 1981
• Sean Hughes – 1990
• Frank Skinner, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard and Lilly Savage – 1991
• Steve Coogan, Joe Brand and Harry Hill – 1992
• Lee Evans, Phil Kay – 1993
• Alan Davies – 1994
• Tim Vine – 1995
• Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Rich Hall and Al Murray – 1996
• Al Murray, Graham Norton and Johnny Vegas – 1997
• Ed Byrne, Peter Kay, Al Murray and The Mighty Boosh – 1998
• Al Murray and Ross Noble – 1999
• Rich Hall, Lee Mack and Dave Gorman – 2000
• Jimmy Carr – 2002
• Flight of the Conchords – 2003
• Tim Minchin – 2005
• David O’Doherty, Rhod Gilbert, Sarah Millican and Russel Kane – 2008
• Russel Kane – 2009 + 2010

As you probably recognise at least 90% you can see how the Edinburgh Comedy Awards are a funnel through which the funniest folk on the face of the planet have been directed into the global television spotlight.  Lee Evans for instance won the award in 1993 and has gone on to enjoy a global comedy career, has become a regular face in Hollywood movies and is currently selling out his tour with theatre tickets in London available if you’re quick…

So who won in 2011?

Well my money was on Nick Helm, due to the fact he had already picked up an award for the best joke of the festival…he looked like a shoe in.

But the eventual winner was Adam Riches for his show: ‘Bring me the Head of Adam Riches’. His ever bellowing style was a hit as he encouraged audience members to embarrass and injure themselves for his, his victim’s and everyone else’s amusement with enjoyable, if unsophisticated success. Here’s a video of him in action (Warning: some bad language and adult themes):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcRnTzEvErY

“But what was the funniest joke of the festival?” I hear you ask…

“I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Edinburgh will always be every comedian’s Mecca. You should visit.

Using Social Media to Keep Your Theatre Buzz Going

Social media has been highlighted in the news recently thanks to its part in being used to organise the riots in England and in particular in London. Two men have even been handed 4 year sentences just for talking about starting a riot on Facebook. This shows just how powerful a medium it has become.

What does this have to do with theatres?

Theatre for many people is seen as the grand old entertainment medium that is being left behind by cinema, but the billions of pounds spend on London theatre tickets each year would clearly show that this is not the case.

One thing theatres are starting to do better though is to interact with their audiences via social media. Many of the major theatres such as Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Apollo, National Theatre, Barbican and Royal Opera House all have some kind of social media presence.

Here’s why:

Facebook

Facebook has about 750 million users and rising. People spend more time online on Facebook than they do doing anything else. By ‘liking’ or ‘friending’ your favourite theatre or theatre company it is possible to get up to the minute information about what is going on. Theatres can use this to build an online personality and provoke conversations about their shows that keep people coming back for more. Also it is possible for people to ‘check-in’ at the venue to tell their Facebook friends that they are there. It is not uncommon for theatres to offer exclusive offers for tickets through their Facebook page too. Certainly could be worth your time.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging universe where people can post short comments that are sent out to everyone that has chosen to ‘follow’ them, meaning that they have decided that they want to receive these comments. Similarly to Facebook this provides an excellent way to stay in touch with what is going on at your favourite venue or even as a means to compare theatre tickets – @seatchoice

YouTube

YouTube needs no introduction. This is one of the best ways to discover new shows and acts that you may be interested in. Want to see what the 25^th Anniversary Les Miserables looks like? Just type it into YouTube and see. Many theatres are now posting footage of a recent or upcoming production to garner ever more interest through social sources.

Blogs

There are literally thousands of blogs around which offer you interesting and valuable information, along with news, reviews, recommendations and interviews with the casts and crews, as well as clips from recent performances to whet your appetite to go and buy a ticket for yourself. Check out theatre’s own blogs, or critics and review blogs for analysis and recommendations.

StumbleUpon

In a recent data release by online stats calculator ‘statcounter.com’, StumbleUpon has become the number one social source for sharing news and videos online, knocking Facebook off its top perch. It is also currently the no.1 social referrer of traffic in the US. StumbleUpon is designed to allow you to share links or videos etc. as you ‘stumble’ around the web. It is not so big in the UK yet but it may be worth checking out for receiving recommendations in the future.

Conclusion …

Modern theatre is embracing social media in a big way. How do you use social media to interact with your favourite theatres?

SeatChoice on Facebook

SeatChoice on Twitter

SeatChoice/UKTW Android Application!

Waiting for the Panda

Ok, lots of changes made and now to wait …

Changes made to the website might affect the SERPs reasonably quickly … the Googlebot spider is forever trawling across websites looking for new and changed materials so new items on the site can be indexed pretty quickly … by which I mean the pages will be shoved into the Google database

The Panda, however, does not run all the time. Every now and then (cycle to be determined, somewhere in the 6-8 week frame) Panda comes along and goes through the Google database weeding out what it sees as low quality sites … having done this, it goes to sleep again until the next time.

So in theory you could see a sawtooth waveform on your traffic, slow build up between Panda runs with large drops immediately after a Panda run – if this is the case then you have not yet solved the Panda problem because the best scenario is that you go UP after a Panda run and your competitors (or at least the spammers in your market segment) are the ones going down.

But to know this, you have to wait …..

Meanwhile, our good news is that our Reconsideration Request has been handled and no manual penalties were found on our site …

Panda – the fight back is underway

The Google Panda update is still causing us here at SeatChoice/UK Theatre web a mass of headache but we’re fighting back slowly.

The Panda isn’t actually, as we understand it, a direct part of the Google search but it is run from time to time to “weed out” sites that are deemed to be useless – basically all those rotten sites that you used to see in Google search results (SERPs) are now history. Unfortunately, some good sites are being caught in the net too – a bit like dolphins are killed as by-catch when netting for tuna (see Hugh’s Fish Fight for details!) … and yes, we’re part of that collateral damage.

UKTW/SeatChoice has been providing on-line what’s on services since 1995 (1994 if you count Gopher services!) and has been used, over the years, by SeatChoice, the BBC, Whatsonstage, London Dance, the eTelegraph, the New York Times (digital) and more. The services have been discussed on radio, including Front Row and are seen as a significant national resource by the Theatre Museum (V&A) as part of their on-going project to develop a national performing arts archive. Our listings are gathered in from a whole range of sources and are hand entered into our custom database … we then link tickets from over 20 suppliers to the individual shows so that our specialist live ticket search capabilities can find real live ticket availability and price – across the whole UK (not just the lucrative West End).

A labour of love but one that does need to earn enough to keep us doing it!

That was fine, we were doing ok, in fact things were getting better all the time, lots of people turning up at the site and using our unique functionality to find tickets and save money … lots of spend, lots of saved money, we were doing a worthwhile job that was appreciated … then the Panda arrived on the English speaking shores of Google … traffic for SeatChoice fell by over 80% overnight and then continued to slide down …. income went with it … wow …

So now the trick is to unpick why we have been slapped so hard, pick up the pieces, learn the lessons, rebuild and wait! No point in complaining, Google is what Google is and we all benefit from cleaner results. So here’s the first of some blogging about what we’re going to do about it all

First things first, we checked that the site stayed low in the traffic, checked that it was still being spidered, looked for errors in the code and basically checked around; nothing obvious, we still turned up somewhere in the results just not anywhere useful … we did, however, put in a reconsideration request and were informed that we didn’t break any guidelines. Good. That’s a start.

Next thing was to get advice from our SEO company .. well, actually, first step was to fire our SEO company, get a new one and ask for advice. To be honest, what the old company was doing was fine for the pre-Panda Google, but they should have known Panda was coming (it hit the USA before the rest of the world) and they should have warned us, or at least given us a strategy … we got silence so they got fired. The new SEO company was more business-like .. but in the end didn’t really have strong ideas, or if they did they failed to communicate them So, we appeared to be spending a lot of money on … well, they never told us what.

We did start to move up for the selected key phrases but to be honest had we been number 1 for all of them we still would not have replaced our original traffic – why? Well, we cover the whole UK, we have an enormous “long tail” response and if those minor pages do well then we do well … just picking off a few key phrases doesn’t really help. So that SEO company has also now gone. We’re on our own, but we’re happier (and richer) that way!

What I (re)discovered was the Google Webmaster Forums (Fora!) … volunteers (and the odd Google employee) who will answer your questions, look at your site, tell you things you don’t want to hear (but need to) and basically try to help. Wonderful people. Reminded me of the early days when everyone was a volunteer and free help was always the order of the day on-line … but then it was 1984 (no, not that 1984) and we were all sharing 64K of bandwidth and singing the praises of the VT100. Happy, heady, days when we argued about Green Book, worried that Janet was big-endian (I still say that’s more logical) and DARPA was little-endian (they won, it was their ball after all), wehn compuserve still had user id’s like 154562.88724 and when I had to login via Oxford University then Goonhilly to read my mail account in Argonne!

The other great discovery was the wonderful Matt Cutts on You Tube – the real word from Google!

Anyway, the lessons learned are that SeatChoice has fallen foul of one or more of the following no-nos

1. Thin Content – having pages with little content on is a bad thing
2. Internally Duplicated Content – should be avoided if possible
3. Externally Duplicated Content – a real turn-off for Google
4. Affiliate Page – if you’re seen as a not very interesting site with lots of paid links or links to afiliate systems then you’re a prime candidate for being killed by the Panda
5. External Links – the more you have the better you are!
6. Quality Content – that’s what you need!
7. Quality Links – those external links mentioned above? Well, they need to come from quality sites .. if they come from “publish your own press release” sites where all the press releases were written in India and mechanically-mis-translated then you will get negative points not positive ones
8. Compelling Meta: No point in getting on page 1 of Google results if your title and meta description are so poor that no one chooses to click through!

So, why were we hit so hard ….

1. Thin Content: we have a lot of pages, one per “listing”, i.e. one per show at a venue … sometimes there’s not much to say about that show, sometimes the pages are indeed thin, sometimes the show doesn’t warrant much
2. Internally Duplicated Content: Yes, we have this …  if Lee Evans does 75 dates on a tour, each of those 75 pages on our site would have a copy of the synopsis on
3. Externally Duplicated Content: if a show’s press officer sends out a press release describing that show then you’re going to see that text a lot … press release sites, theatre/concert sites, newspaper sites, listings sites, venue sites … and then, of course, our listings can be found on other people’s sites … duplication
4. Affiliate Page: Often leveled at us, but actually unfair – we may be thin sometimes but the functionality we provide is unique, its just that function is not measurable whereas content is
5. External Links: if a show is only on for a couple of nights you’re going to have trouble getting links …
6. Quality Content: We have people generating new content all day every day, uniqueness is hard to come by when we’re listing what’s on but we centralise and manually check every thing we get -and quality now means good spelling, grammar and punctuation …
7. Quality Links: ok, so our previous SEO company was based in India .. but what they did then was not black hat, shame its being so penalised now
8. Compelling Meta: Probably wasn’t our strong point

Having looked over the SeatChoice site in great detail and having listened to the Webmaster Forum, our SEO company and the monkey on my shoulder I think that the pain has been caused very largely by (7) and made worse by (3), a misinterpretation that we fall foul of (4) and a lack of sufficient (5) … sounds like an order at a Chinese Restaurant ….

To be honest, however, I think Google has missed something here

• Google are forever talking about “articles” .. publish good ones and you’ll do well. But not every good site is article (as in large scale textual content) driven and adding articles just to get Google’s attention seems wrong – what if your website is driven by functionality? What if the users want a clean page with no extraneous text on it … the man from Google he say no!
• Google always says “build good content for the user, don’t worry about the search engines”, really? They’re joking right …
• Google also says “build good content and the links will follow”, for articles this is true, for ephemeral content such as “what’s on” listings this probably isn’t true …. a show may be advertised only a month or so before its on and may be on for one night only …
• Google has a QDF check in which it tries to decide whether a query demands freshness (QDF) or not, i.e. should the answer be based on the oldest content on the web (presumably the most authoritative) or the newest (fresh news) .. I think it may have this wrong for the keyword “tickets”, why else would a search for “ruby wax tickets” return (admittedly at position 187) a link to my websites Warwick Arts Centre page (which hasn’t mentioned Ruby Wax for a very long time) before it returns a link (40 positions later) to my Ruby Wax Tour of 2000 page (11 years out of date and with no mention of “tickets” in the past 11 years!)  and finally (a further 40 positions later) a link to my current Ruby Wax at the Duchess Theatre page! The user wants 11 year old information more than current information?
• Google hates sites where the user finds one page then clicks away … but wait, isn’t that the idea? You want “We Will Rock You” tickets so type in “we will rock you tickets” to Google, select the SeatChoice page, look at what’s on offer, click to a supplier and bang, you’re done – best possible user experience, worst possible Google impact! But wait, isn’t that what Google does? Perhaps that’s why google doesn’t come out top when you type in “search engine”

Ok, so the problem is defined, the solutions need to follow … further blog entries will look at what we have done (and its effects) and what remains to be done (and our hopes for it)

Being Killed by the Panda Slap

There are a growing number of small, legitimate, websites reporting that they are going to have to give up as they can not recover from a fatal Panda Slap – and we are suffering badly too.

A good article, which tries to help explain it; Why Google Panda slapped quality sites.

Tied to my Android

I’m loving the tethering and access point on my Android phone … it used to be that if my wife and I were travelling we’d take the Orange Mobile dongle with us which allowed one of us at least to access the internet reasonably well. Now I just use my Andoid phone in tethered mode which acts as a wired mode and then turn on the wifi access point on the phone which means family and friends can all share the connection … we’ve even watched TV this way. Fabulous, freedom on the move …

I’m also coming to grips with developing for the Android … we have an “UKTW” beta-application out in the Android marketplace and that will soon be replaced with the first production release. Its a matter at the moment of balancing the local and remote data so that the system can provide some information off-line.

Interesting times