Could your web site get you sued?
by Kevin Henney, filed under:
A precedent setting legal case this week should make all web site owners sit up and take notice. A federal district court judge in California has allowed a suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) against Target Corp. to go forward, despite Target's claims that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not apply to web sites. From the NFB's press release:
"This ruling is a great victory for blind people throughout the country," said NFB President Dr. Marc Maurer. "We are pleased that the court recognized that the blind are entitled to equal access to retail websites."
What does this mean for the average web site owner? Businesses may soon need to make efforts to accomodate disabled users of their web sites, similar to more familiar accomodations in the offline world such as wheelchair ramps and handicapped parking spaces.
Despite fears that these accomodations may be costly for web site operators, building accessible web pages is not terribly difficult, and can actually benefit your business in unexpected ways. Many of the same techniques that allow disabled users to access your site are also beneficial to search engines, and are also commonly used for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In many ways, a search engine's software is not unlike a blind user. A search engine cannot view text placed in images, nor can it navigate through most Flash based sites. Because accessible sites are more visible to search engines as well as the disabled, businesses that make the extra effort to accomodate blind users may find that their sites rank higher in the search engines. For that reason alone, accessible web sites should be a priority for any business. Avoiding a lawsuit like the one Target is facing is just a fortunate side effect.
Mining AOL's search data
by Kevin Henney, filed under:
Aside from the obvious privacy angle on AOL's recent release of the search records from 650,000 of its customers, some interesting data has begun to surface from those brave souls willing to sift through the 17+ million searches.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today detailing some of the trends found in that data. Among the most interesting points:
- The top ten words searched for were:
- free
- new
- lyrics
- county
- school
- city
- home
- state
- pictures
- music
- In 47% of all searches, users did not click on any of the links presented to them
- When users did click on a search result, they choose the first site listed 42% of the time
When considering this data, it's important to keep in mind that it contains only the search records of AOL users, so this shouldn't be expected to represent the search habits of more technically adept users. It does give some insights into the search behavior of a great many users, though, and it's worth paying attention to.
Most notable is the importance of ranking in the number one spot for a given search term. With 42% of clicks going to the top result, it's obvious that there's a huge difference in traffic between simply being on the first page of results and gaining that number one spot. The number 10 listing might still get decent traffic for a common search phrase, but for less common niches number one is the only place to be.
