Quick, what is the most read and used website on the planet? It’s not Google, it’s Yahoo!
What is the most read news website on the planet? It’s not Google News, it’s Yahoo! News.
Despite its position as media darling, Google trails is competitor (and advertising partner) Yahoo! in many respects. Not only does Yahoo! beat them on total aggregate traffic, but its news site has more than three times the traffic of Google News (35 million monthly, unique visitors compared to only 11 million). In fact, Google News sits in eighth spot, right behind the lowly Gannett Newspapers and flounders with the lowest growth of all the top 10 news sites.
Perhaps a key reason for Google’s fledgling traffic status when compared to Yahoo! (though they are often rated as the 2nd most used website on the planet so they’re still doing fine thank you very much) may be the nature of its websites. In short, Google lacks original content. While Yahoo! not only compiles news from other sources, it also creates its own content with expert columnists.
Read my full column on Content Matters: Content is still king
But how does this relate to the intranet? Well, for starters, most employees will complain that the intranet is very average, that its very difficult to find what they're looking for, that the search engine sucks, but the content is good. Yes, by and large, a vast majority of intranet users rate the content on their intranet as very good.
Now at most of our clients, I estimate (and this is something we measure for most individual clients, but rather than add them all up and produce an aggregate score, I'll give you the rough estimated average) that the average daily use of the intranet is around 70% of employees. That is to say, 70% of all employees use the intranet on a daily basis. Most may only glance at the home page on the way to the phone directory, or their own specific page or site, but use is still high -- in spite of poor navigation, search, usability and design. In short, the intranet sucks, but the content is pretty good.
Hence, content is still king.
CONTINUE READING:
Not all content is created nor need be equal
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