A couple of days before the launch of WDANZ I thought I’d use the opportunity to analyse how effective Google Alerts are. I wanted to test the breadth of indexing and how quickly the reactions of bloggers might be picked up.
In the table below you can see how Google indexed the sites talking about this breaking news item.
Curiously, the reports seem to be out of date – the ComputerWorld example is the best – by the time the alert comes through the story had been buried in the archives.
This doesn’t spell doom for Google’s alerts – where they can direct you to a permalink – but it does render the homepage alerts virtually worthless.
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July 4 4.17am |
National web developer organisation launched today Computerworld New Zealand – Auckland,New Zealand The national organisation Web Developers Association of New Zealand (WDANZ) is being launched today, 4 July. WDANZ, a commercial … |
A respected news site, likely to be crawled very frequently. |
| July 4 3.49pm |
Web Developers Association of New Zealand | WDANZ
You have reached the future website of: Web Developers Association of New Zealand PO Box 101-470 North Shore Mail Centre Phone +64 9 486-6410 … |
This looks like the page but redirects to the official site. |
| July 5 3.21pm |
Web Developers Association of New Zealand | WDANZ You have reached the future website of: Web Developers Association of New Zealand PO Box 101-470 North Shore Mail Centre Phone +64 9 486-6410 … |
Launch Day but showing as "future site"? Is there some delay between the crawl and the index? The alert is set for "as it happens" but this is patently out of date. |
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Computerworld > National web developer organisation launched today WDANZ, a commercial organisation for New Zealand web developers, will organise a range of networking, training and sales events, says Dennis Smith, … |
A respected news site, likely to be crawled very frequently. | |
| Jul 6 3:37pm |
Unlimited Newswatch WDANZ aims to provide whatever services web developers need – Computerworld Telecom’s united front on separation Telecom announced last week it would split … |
A feed aggregator – likely to be frequently crawled. |
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digg / yum9me / dugg Dennis Smith has taken the bull by the horns and started up the WDANZ. This is my take on the association – and what it aims to do. … |
A kiwi blogger – doesn’t have a high Digg profile so the indexing is likely to be by chance. Google is likely to index Digg frequently because it’s constantly being updated by the large community of users. | |
| Jul 7 3:53pm |
digg / sarahk / dugg Dennis Smith has taken the bull by the horns and started up the WDANZ. This is my take on the association – and what it aims to do. … |
My submission to Digg. |
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iTamer’s Simple SEO » Web Developers in New Zealand If I choose a web designer that is a member of WDANZ, what does that mean? … So you won’t be getting any free websites from WDANZ members. … |
My blog entry | |
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Technology, Macs, the Internet and other matters. A group called Web Developers Association of New Zealand (WDANZ) has popped out of nowhere today, claiming they want to bring professionalism to NZ web … |
The home page was indexed, but not the internal, permanent page. | |
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Web Design News: July 04, 2006 | Web Design Library WDANZ, a commercial organisation for New Zealand web developers, will organise a … WDANZ was established following discussions with the developer industry … |
The Web Design Library. Reproduced article from Computerworld, with the permanent page indexed. |
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Science and Technology News and Commentary: Aardvark Daily If WDANZ were offering some kind of consumer guarantee (as many other industry groups do) then I might be more inclined to think that it will become a … |
Aardvark Daily – the commentary page shows the days comments and archives are offline. This appears to be an old and busy site so indexing will be frequent. | |
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Web Developers Association of New Zealand | WDANZ The 6 June WDANZ Report to Industry, provides you with a summary of your feedback … WDANZ Foundation Memberships are available until 31st August 2006. … |
Back to the official site but it’s still just the home page. | |
| Jul 8 3:10pm |
Computerworld New Zealand: New Zealand’s IT Information Source National web developer organisation launched today WDANZ aims to provide whatever services web developers need. Latest … |
This story doesn’t feature on the home page at all. |
| Wellington — Technology, Macs, the Internet and other matters. A group called Web Developers Association of New Zealand (WDANZ) has popped out of nowhere today, claiming they want to bring professionalism to NZ web … |
The deep links for this blog coming through. It was first indexed yesterday. |
Noticeable by their absense from the Google Alerts is the PHP UG Archive
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