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ahh ok, sorry thought you'd got the hump  apologies 

Been one of those days today, everyone seems grumpy. Our man Clive hasn't stopped moaning all day, which is justified as he's been shouting at worldpay, dealing with multiple complaints, and trying to deal with moving house 

Meanwhile we have grumpy customers, grumpy suppliers and now grumpy car owners in our business centre as it seems I've blocked everyone in.

I blame the weather!

Go for it. Don't expect a quick response, but let us know how you get on

lol now that's my kind of story!

My old man used to work for first the PO, then Telecom. How proud we were when the yellow painted Telecom Morris Minor van turned up on the drive  

Anyone remember Buzby...

Courtesy wikipedia

Fascinating piece in the Guardian about Hermes Courier drivers. Really gives you food for thought.

So the courier drivers are all self employed, giving them minimal rights, no sick pay etc. I find it bizarre they are happy for back to work mums to become couriers in the family Nissan Micra

Interesting final analysis, after 6.5 hours travel time, he delivered 60 packages, and got paid 80p a package which gave him a payment of £48. His costs were 55p insurance, and £6 fuel, which gave a profit of £41.45, or £6.38 per hour.

I'll confess to being as short with white van drivers as other people as they go hurtling round the country. But maybe this sheds some more light on why.

With Amazon talking about the potential of delivering 30 minutes after ordering via drones, you do wonder if this I want it now culture is really a direction we want to be going? Is it really that bad to have to wait a few days if you order online?

If it really is that urgent, you could always go to the shops (assuming they are still open)?

So if you send your products by courier, are you aware they may get to the final destination crammed in the back of a Nissan Micra?

Any thoughts?

Can I help you? Yes please make coffee faster Costa Slowbucks  I reckon they need a big jar of Nescafe, problem solved.

At least now we know who is eating all the muffins 

This is an argument that has been rolling around for years.

In 2013, Matt Cutts, the then public face of Google specifically said Google doesn't use a site bounce rate as a signal, and Google has said they don't use the data from our Google Analytics.

But..

There seems to be a growing argument for "back button stats". Google is ever increasingly refining search results based on user behaviour and type of queries. They have a mountain of data that can tracks user behaviour, and someone that enters your site from Googles index, then bounces back to the search index very quickly and searches or looks for another result with the same query, will arguably now carry weight. So nothing to do with GA data, just the Google God/Gorg analysing user behaviour.

The otherside of the same argument is that it's quite easy to manipulate by making a wow factor, titillation, or browse bait content to keep the user on your page regardless of his original search query. Off piste or aimless meandering being something we are all guilty of. This is personally where I am, so I'm also less convinced how or if bounce data is perceived and used.

Long and quality content is another one that seems to fuel two arguments. If it is a thorough, deep or interest article that grips a visitors attention, then are they going to "bounce away" from that page when complete, such as your closing browser argument? Or are they likely to be gripped and look for more quality content by the same author? If they book mark the page and revisit within 30 days, does that go from a negative bounce signal to a positive engagement signal?

As a straight forward directory, our bounce rate was horrendous and I used to obsess about it. But talking with other directory owners, it was clear we weren't alone. The consensus was that on a directory, particularly mobile results, a user finds the result they want, ie tel number or address and then disappear. So this is positive rather than negative.

But bounce stats are a useful to analyse in GA as they can point to problem areas in your site you might not have noticed.

The SEO bounce argument swings back and forth, which is what prompted me migrate our standalone vbulletin forum onto the directory. Since we did that, bounce rate has gone down, but traffic wise no difference. So I don't think personally it has much bearing, but the bounce debate will no doubt rumble on for many more years

erm, it's (was) a thread about grammar, light hearted open discussion and debate with a good dose of humour. Clinton has put an interesting take on it from someone who isn't (wasn't? now you've got me at it) originally from the UK.

If you look at Clintons LinkedIn profile, I think he has been very magnanimous in his "Poles apart" humour. When light hearted banter starts to get taken personally, then it ceases to be banter.

As Barney says, it looks like this thread has now run it's course, which is a shame as it was becoming quite interesting. 

Ahh see what it is, where there is a fault with the green box, then they need to get the stripey tent out, because that's where they set the kettle up.

It's a well known fact that tea drinking is a 2 man job

image source: aronline.co.uk

Blimey, South Africa is on my go to list, but I thought things were supposed to be a lot safer now. Is it still that bad?  I've heard from friends that the capital is supposed to be safer, although usual common sense stuff at the Airport, taxis etc.

We are pretty sheltered as a whole in the UK, although the News will tell try and tell you otherwise. You are more at risk of getting run over than being a victim of crime, with a professional Police Force which you only really appreciate when you start visiting other parts of the world. Sometimes it's interesting (and frightening) to see how law enforcement, human rights and crime varies, Saudi Arabia being one of my favourite examples of a low bench mark 

Unfortunately hiring a UK SEO firm is no guarantee of not using off shore resource. We see literally thousands of spammy SEO listings every month, some of them supposed to be from UK based (expensive) agencies, but with Indian, Philippines or Eastern Europe IP addresses.

Because citation building is so mind numbingly boring, and the automated tools out there are so terrible, its deemed cheaper to out source.

Unfortunately, humans paid a pittance are lazy and unmotivated so "citations listings" tend to be full of typos, mistakes, wrong categories and copy and pasted content that isn't formatted or gets truncated depending which directory they are on.

The good news is it makes them easier to spot and auto delete, leaving just a few Yodas to appear on the forum who managed to sneak past our filters.