Coast Digital Blog

If you want to read a lot of misguided nonsense about SEO, then look no further than this post by Derek Powazek. Remarkable for its non-truths as well as its many oversights, it argues - unconvincingly - that search engine optimisation is not a legitimate form of marketing.

Utter rubbish. The SEO community is full of hardworking people who have earned an excellent reputation for excellent work. At Coast Digital, we prove to clients that SEO is marketing you can measure - if they didn’t get a good ROI, they simply wouldn’t hire us.

It’s true that not every so-called SEO expert is the real thing, but articles like Powazek’s have the power to cause damage to the good guys.

That’s why I’ve decided to give his piece a good fisking. Here goes....

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

First came the web, and it was a mess. Servers went up everywhere, the net connected them all, pages bloomed like flowers, and no one could find a damn thing.

Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google with its rankings of most-linked pages, we were finally able to find the pages we needed, mostly.

The ascendency of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

If they’re ‘scammers’, how come they can back up their work with real statistics? By all means, avoid anyone that can’t, or won’t. But a good SEO firm will use web analytics packages to prove exactly what impact their work has had on a website - the visitors, the key phrases that are being optimised, and revenue increases. It’s hard statistical evidence.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. I’m going to tell you about the problems, and then tell you the one true way to generate traffic on the web, based on my own 14 years of hits and misses.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

That’s the point – the good advice is obvious, especially if you’ve got the time to learn how best to apply various techniques, manage the link strategy for a site and gain the experience that only comes with looking after the SEO for a multitude of sites. What isn’t so obvious is the amount of testing you need to do, the trial and error of new techniques, the effect of industry changes and movements by Google. Realistically, I could do my own accounting, or write my own will; yet many people will pay an accountant or a solicitor because they will do a better job, and probably save money in the long run. They do it every day, all day - and you pay for their experience.

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.

This is what we call “black hat” SEO – deliberately contravening Google’s terms and conditions. The techniques (that I do not endorse) can and do work - and often for considerably longer than two weeks. The problem is that you can be penalized as quickly as you can see gains – not something that any ethical SEO practitioner would risk on a client’s site. On the other hand, there are lots of techniques that fall into a ‘grey’ area, not outlawed by Google, but perhaps not widely accepted as best practice. It’s up to the SEO in question to balance their white hat and grey hat techniques.

And when they do reindex, if they determine that you’ve been acting in bad faith (like hiding links or keywords or other deceptive practices) they’ll drop you like a hot rock. So a temporary gain may result in a lifetime ban.

Hiding links or keywords are black hat SEO techniques from about 1999. Any SEO worth their salt isn’t going to base a strategy around this kind of thing.

In the end, you’re sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won’t last the month. And how valuable was that increase, anyway? If you’re tricking people into visiting your site, those visits are going to be bad experiences.

If you are encouraging the right visitors to your site by appearing more prominently when they search for keywords pre-determined by you, your site and your SEO team, there’s no question of the quality of the traffic. How can incremental visitors be a hindrance in any respect? If you drive 100 quality brand visits a day and they convert to customers or enquiries at a rate of 10%, and then we carry out some SEO that drives 500 visits that convert at 2%, there’s still a double increase in enquiries. Why would anyone not want double the new business? If ‘brand integrity’ is the tradeoff for exposure, I’d hate to guess how this guy runs his businesses.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Google’s ranking algorithm is based on links. So the most effective way to game their system is to plant links on as many sites as possible, all pointing to your site, linked from specific keywords. This is called Google bombing.

This is not called Google bombing. Google bombing was a term used to push non-related content to the top of the search engine by using inbound links – jokes in a sense. SEO differs in that the content at the destination page is related very strongly to the keyword links. Again, this is just one small part of the SEO strategy. If you imagine that creating interesting, newsworthy content generates a buzz online, this inbound linking is a natural phenomenon. Link building simply gives things a ‘gentle nudge’ in the right direction. The trick of the link builder is to obtain natural looking, quality links on high ranking sites, a sought after skill.

Ironically, writing rubbish like Powazek is a brilliant SEO technique because it generates oodles of inbound links.

SEO cockroaches employ botnets, third-world labor, and zombie computers to blanket the web with link spam. 99% of spam comments to blogs are these kind of links. The target of these links is not the blog readers, it’s Google.

In all of the years I’ve worked in search optimisation, I have done none of these things. Again, a very small section of the industry justifies this criticism. Google is very aware of web spam and works extremely hard to counteract it. That’s why SEO companies push ‘ethical’ techniques so much.

SEO bastards are behind worms that attack blog services like Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. Some hack into the blog templates themselves to insert links that are hidden from the readers of that blog, but visible to a Google crawler.

And they create programs to grab expired domain names, automatically create websites, filling the pages with content stolen from RSS feeds, creating billions of bad results for users.

It’s a game, and every link is a score for the SEO jerkwads and their disreputable clients. And every time they win, those of us trying to create quality work and good experiences on the web lose.

Again, this is a sweeping accusation. Hackers and Crackers break into these sites, not SEO consultants. Again, this is spam and Google penalises accordingly.

Worse than the hackers are the competent journalists and site creators that are making legitimate content online, but get seduced by the SEO dark side into thinking they need to create content for Google instead of for their readers. It dumbs-down the content, which turns off your real audience, which ultimately makes you less valuable to advertisers. If you want to know why there’s so much remnant advertising on online news sites, it’s because you’re treating the stories like remnants already.

You do need to create content for Google, otherwise you won’t have the reach that you could have. It’s a lucky thing that Google recommend that you write content for users, not the search engine, and they re-iterate that point frequently.  A better statement would be that “You should create content primarily for users, but have the search engine requirements in mind while doing so”.

Remember this: It’s not your job to create content for Google. it’s their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

If it is Google’s job to find the most relevant results for user searches, it must be the job of the website owner to ensure that their content is the most relevant. That is exactly what SEO is. Making the pages presented to Google as relevant as possible for specific keyword searches.

The One True Way

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

He’s correct here. You should absolutely make your website detailed, with quality, fresh, unique content. But an SEO is a data analyst, amongst other skills, and if your content wasn’t good enough the SEO consultant can tell you why that might be, how to best fix it and how to make money from it. 

But the ‘it doesn’t work, throw it away and start again’ attitude won’t cut it when we are talking about a £200,000 corporate web build, and there are directors putting pressure on you from above about the site's performance. Similarly, to compete with large budget sites, smaller fry have to work hard to appear in the search results. Good content is a part of it, but the really enlightened website owner will combine great content with techniques that get it the exposure it deserves. Unlike Powazek, most sites can’t get massive exposure by shouting nonsense - looking idiotic is bad for most brands. And that’s why good, ethical, effective SEO is so important. Try us.

With Royal Mail’s national strike action kicking off today, my thoughts have turned to the millions of e-tailers that must find a way to compensate for the reduced postal service over the next couple of days.

For most people, shopping online is all about convenience. If they don’t have time to venture onto the High Street, the internet now presents a fine alternative. But with the postal strikes threatening to discourage people from placing urgent orders online, particularly during the all-important run up to Christmas, what can e-tailers do to maintain sales revenues?

Make sure you have a plan B

Many companies have had to find alternative delivery options that will guarantee their customers the level of service that they have come to expect. An increase in delivery times – even by as little as a couple of days – is simply unacceptable for some shoppers, so many e-tailers are having to absorb the additional costs associated with using other carriers to reduce the impact on customers.

For these e-tailers, communicating that deliveries will be unaffected by the Royal Mail strike action clearly and confidently on their homepage might just salvage some of the sales that could have been lost over the next couple of days.

John Lewis has already issued a statement – and added a box to its homepage – to assure its customers that a “robust contingency plan” will ensure that its deliveries are entirely unaffected. I also received an email from Next this morning informing me that its next day delivery service will continue as normal.

These might be simple enough steps for established retailers like John Lewis and Next to take, but what about the rest of the online marketplace that simply can’t afford to absorb the extra overheads?

Communication is key

Informing customers fully about potentially significant delays to deliveries, and dealing with any concerns thoughtfully and efficiently, seems to be just about the only other option. Making information visible on the homepage and order pages could save customers a lot of worry – and should hopefully lead to fewer calls to customer helplines.

It is important that pay-per-click adverts are also amended if they contain delivery information so as not to mislead users who might specifically be looking for a prompt dispatch of their goods. If this step isn’t taken, bounce rates are likely to skyrocket as potential customers click through on paid adverts then immediately leave the site as they realise that the service isn’t what they are looking for.

It’s all about loyalty

Perhaps the next couple of days will enable e-tailers to truly assess whether they have managed to create such an enjoyable online experience that customers will keep coming back for more, even if they do have to wait an extra couple of days for their purchases to arrive. After all, building customer confidence and loyalty is vital to the success of any business – regardless of whether it operates online or offline.

If e-tailers have achieved these goals, then they should be able to comfortably ride out the next few days and indeed the entire Christmas period, regardless of further postal strikes. If not, then perhaps it’s time to talk to a web design agency that knows a thing or two about implementing measurable ecommerce solutions that will truly engage customers and generate more sales.

Isn’t that what every e-tailer wants for Christmas?

If 2008 was the year of Facebook, then 2009 was the time Twitter came of age. And since both are now used in high-profile campaigns, such as President Obama’s bid for the White House, it’s fair to say that social media is here to stay.

But how much influence do social networks actually have? Are they great for gossip, or agents for real change? I’d say that the last week has brought us one step nearer to finding out.

Let’s cast our minds back...

A storm is a-brewing

It began on Monday night with a headline: “Guardian gagged from reporting parliament”.  

In case you missed this one, law firm Carter-Ruck issued The Guardian with a gagging order to prevent it from reporting a question that was due to be asked in Parliament later in the week. Predictably, the use of the outdated print regulation outraged social media users and both #Carter-Ruck and #trafigura (the oil trading firm it was representing) were soon ‘trending’ on Twitter, resulting in a slick of negative publicity for both firms.

Carter-Ruck hastily withdrew the gag.

Clever tactic or convenient result?

In my mind, this was the clearest example to date of how new media can trample over previously stalwart conventions through sheer ferocity. While many newspapers disappointingly failed to report the contribution that Twitter made to The Guardian’s victory in this case, editor Alan Rusbridger was quick to dish out credit the following day:  

@arusbridger: Thanks to Twitter/all tweeters for fantastic support over past 16 hours! Great victory for free speech.

Nowhere to hide

The Guardian gagging was only the start. Thursday saw YouTube chosen as the online venue to expose a Transport for London employee’s shameful behaviour towards a commuter.

The employee in question was caught on camera exclaiming “sling him under a train”, after an argument with a passenger. Twitter was abuzz with calls for the man to be fired with immediate effect. The protest was so persuasive that Boris Johnson waded into the row by tweeting:

@MayorOfLondon: Appalled by the video. Have asked TfL to investigate urgently. Abuse by passengers or staff is never acceptable.

Word on the street is that the disgraced TfL employee has already been suspended.

Action speaks louder than words

The third instance of the power of social networks last week was, in many ways, similar to the TfL example.

The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir wrote a disgraceful article about Stephen Gateley’s death which led to over 21,000 protests to the Press Complaints Commission. The online version of Moir’s article had received 479 objectionable comments when I last checked on Friday afternoon. A quick glance this morning revealed that the Daily Mail has since removed all comments and opted for the rather unsatisfactory: “We are no longer accepting comments on this article.”

Whether Moir retains her column beyond the end of the week remains to be seen.

Power to the people?

This week has shown that, if people use social media to swing behind a cause, they can effect real change. But in one respect the new media are no different to the old – if a cause doesn’t capture the popular imagination, it won’t get the publicity it needs. It’s also as easy as ever to confuse popularity with being right, which gives social media the potential to be the driving force for witch-hunts – although all the examples above led to very positive outcomes.

Nowhere to hide

There’s also another question that needs answering. Do you think online reputation management could have saved the TfL employee and Moir, or has the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for social media made it too difficult for anyone to control an online profile? If you have any thoughts on this, please leave me a comment.

When Jan Moir wrote an allegedly homophobic article in today's Daily Mail, she little expected that - within nine or ten hours - her name would become the number one trending topic on the Twitter social network; that the Mail would change the title on her online article; that firms including Marks and Spencer would demand to have their adverts removed from the same web page; and that she would have to make a statement and apology for what had happened.

Oh, and I bet she didn't guess that she'd have to open a Twitter account in an ill-advised attempt to clear her name.

Moir's article was about the death of Boyzone star, Stephen Gately. The musician was gay, and Moir's article claimed that, rather than dying of natural causes, there was 'nothing natural' about Gately's death. The section of her article that caused particular offence was this:

The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again. 

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

The first I knew of the article was this morning, when I checked my Twitter feed. I saw that the publisher Scott Pack had posted:

VIle piece of 'journalism' about Stephen Gately by some evil cow called Jan Moir http://bit.ly/2cCQJ7 (via @Petronella)

I read it, and I agreed. My reply was simply:

@meandmybigmouth Yes, that's a disgraceful article.

And I would probably have thought no more of it, bar popping out to buy a copy of the Daily Mail to light my fire with, had Scott not then tweeted:

RT @meandmybigmouth: Can we get #janmoir trending? Her vile piece will make you want to RT her f*cking arse off: http://bit.ly/kbgYo

I retweeted it, and so did quite a number of Scott's followers. And within a couple of hours, both 'Jan Moir' and #janmoir were indeed trending topics.

That's how simple it is to start a Twitter trend - and personally, I think Scott Pack is to be commended for having the idea and putting it into action. Yes, the sight of a Twitter wave of anger can be distasteful, and more than one person has objected to it on the grounds of 'bullying' or 'mass hysteria'. But I disagree, and I think the best summary came from London Assembly Member Andrew Boff:

#janmoir I admit, I orchestrated the campaign, along with a few tens of thousands of other people who have a shred of decency.

To paraphrase another Twitterer, columnists like Moir no longer have to tell themselves what their readership thinks - their readership now has the power to do it for themselves. In my opinion, that's got to be good for democracy. 

Well, I had almost given up hope of receiving a Google Wave invite when - lo and behold - a good friend of mine emailed me. Subject line – “Want a google wave invite?”

It turns out he had beeen chosen in Google’s lottery to get an invite, and he was given a few more to give out. Luckily he was generous enough to hand one of those on to me (and not just stick them on ebay - http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=google+wave+invite&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=)

So I’ve been playing around with it a little this afternoon, but I’ve not really had enough time to figure out what it can do. I’m hoping to get a bit more involved with it at the weekend, so may have some more feedback next week!

First impressions are good. The interface is slick, and easy to use. I’ve managed to pull my Twitter feed in, watched the 8 minute video on the potential uses (which I must say looks very impressive) and had a play around with a few waves and some of the apps, as well as dragging images into waves from my desktop (which is very nice!).  

One thing I’m very keen to investigate more is Wave’s ability to integrate into other sites as a publishing tool. The intro vid shows it being done, but doesn’t cover how...

I think there’s definitely some great potential here. Collaborating on a document is nothing new admittedly, but it’s the way wave handles being able to add notes, diagrams, images, videos (and whatever else you might want to add) that makes it stand out. I can see it being used a lot for brainstorming sessions becuase you can chuck anything in it and everyone can see it. (Stinky white board pens will soon be a thing of the past!) .

It would also be beneficial in conference call situations. All conference call attendees could be in on the wave, which would initially contain an agenda. This could then be built out with notes, and files that need to be shared, a map to a location (if you’re arranging a meeting) and so on. 

Anyway I feel like right now I need a colleague to share this experience with to make the most of it, so I’m hoping that Google sees this and gives me an invite or two to send out to my fellow Coasties. *HINT HINT*

Rupert Murdoch, the driving force behind global media conglomerate News Corp, is not a man who minces his words. So, when he accuses search engines like Google and Yahoo as being 'content kleptomaniacs' at the World Media Summit, I immediately wonder what he's got up his sleeve.

This is, after all, a man who introduced electronic newspaper production in the 1980s in the teeth of opposition from the print unions, and someone who has actually welcomed the future demise of printed editions in favour of portable electronic devices: "...we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It's going to be great."

Making search engines pay

Rupert Murdoch's present stance is that search engines should pay his publications for the content they index and aggregate in services like Google News, largely because he doesn't see why they should earn advertising revenue on his content.

This is, in my opinion, a bluff. After all, if Murdoch really wanted Google, Yahoo, Bing et al to stop indexing websites belonging to - say - The Times, The Sun, The Australian, The New York Post and The Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, then he could get one of his web experts to add a few lines of code into each site's robots.txt file. The nuisance would stop immediately.

Quality content

So what's Murdoch really up to? I think the best way to make an educated guess is to look at how his media empire has been conducting itself over recent years. Even a glance at his UK operations and the state of the domestic newspaper market shows that the game has been afoot for some time.

If you'd asked me about the newspapers I read a few years ago, I could have given you a fairly straightforward answer. As late as 2005, I was reading the Guardian almost daily (had done for 15 years), regularly buying the Times and the Telegraph (seeing at least one edition of each per week), and getting the Sun when I knew there was a good scoop in it. The only papers I never bought were the Mail and the Express. Especially not the Express. Amongst other current affairs publications I would get Private Eye and The Spectator.

Then I started getting more and more of my news online, and decided to drop the daily newspaper habit. I still get Private Eye and the Spectator from the newsstands, but if I do buy a daily newspaper I'll generally nab a copy of the Times.

That's made me wonder what happened to my long-standing brand loyalty to the Guardian. Why don't I buy that on the rare occasions I now get a paper?

Leaving aside the usual gags about getting more right wing as you get older, I think the fundamental answer is that Murdoch's Times has invested heavily in good content, whilst the Guardian has invested heavily in trying to appear more interesting and groundbreaking than it actually is. As a result, the Times has improved considerably - poaching a lot of the Guardian's (and other newspapers') best columnists along the way. The Guardian has got a tidy format, many acres of dullness, a few fertile strips of delusion, and a lot less zing, zap and panache than it had at the turn of the decade, when Francis Wheen was in G2, Matthew Norman was having anarchic fun on the Diary and Simon Hoggart was doing a peerless Parliamentary sketch (he still does, but I read that online. For free).

Net result, the Guardian is leaching readers at a faster rate than the Times - but both are suffering from circulation drops.

The strategy's not for printing

Which brings the Murdoch strategy into focus. He lost about £2 billion last year. Why is he investing so heavily in good content for his print editions? If the newspaper market is contracting, it's only going to be a short-term fix.
 
As you may know, Murdoch has convinced other publishers the way forward is to lock their content behind a pay-wall. This is fine, and I think wise, but people need a way of finding what's behind the barricades.

At the moment, this is where Google, Yahoo, Bing etc come in - they index the news sites, pull the material together in places like Google News, and make a considerable amount of advertising revenue out of the process.
 
It's also why Murdoch has got to get as many rival news outlets to follow his lead. If only Murdoch's titles went behind a pay-wall, then Google et al could relax - they'd just carry on indexing all the rival papers and Murdoch would lose readers and subscriptions.

A Murdoch search engine?

But, if Murdoch gets all the best global news outlets behind a pay-wall, they can collectively tell the search engines to get stuffed.

There's still a problem, though. Because readers have got used to cherry picking from news titles across the world (I love the fact I can trawl newspapers in the UK, US, Australia, South Africa, NZ, Ireland, Singapore, France etc etc), brand loyalty is only going to go so far. I might, if there were no other option, get a subscription to the Times. But there's no way I'm paying for additional subs for the Washington Post, New York Times, Sydney Herald etc etc.

That's why I suspect Murdoch's longer-term strategy is to get quality, paid news providers to opt out of Google and Yahoo and to set up their own search/ directory portal - perhaps a higher quality version of today's Google News. That way, Murdoch will be leading a movement that:

a) starves Google and other search engines of content
b) brings back third party advertising revenue into the portal in which Murdoch has a stake
c) creates a new search USP - quality (ie, subscribe to us because you've no way of knowing what rubbish you're getting via Google)
d) allows subscriptions to be ploughed back into journalism
e) gives the news outlets a strong online citadel, from which to expand into other online operations.

Of course, it's all speculation. But however it does pan out, decent news content is rarely going to be free in the future. The job now is to make online news generate money for the people who create it, rather than the search engines that distribute it at little cost to themselves.

And what better way to do that than with your own search engine?

If, like me, you have keen interest in the world of social media, it's likely that you'll be connected to plenty of people on Twitter and LinkedIN. But have you noticed any so-called social media or SEO 'experts' in your networks?

Defining expertise

In a fast-paced industry like digital marketing, you're on dangerous ground if you claim to be an expert - it's a world that's all about collaboration, sharing ideas and genuinely open debate. New developments are revealed almost hourly, and so many people are desperate to claim the tastiest slice of the social media pie for themselves - from CEOs to PR and marketing professionals to celebrities.

In an environment like this, I can't help but remain dubious about what these so-called 'experts' really have to offer. I'm right behind online writer Lance Winslow when he says:"Beware the man who calls himself an expert or attempts to conveniently modify the definition to be self-inclusive."

What's in a name?

Unfortunately the folly doesn't end there. In the last two days alone I've noticed agencies advertising vacancies for 'social media gurus' and 'internet marketing geniuses'. Perhaps it's a sign of the times, or maybe it's a case of a progressive industry trying to differentiate itself from the rest of the marketplace; but exactly who and what they're looking for remains unclear.

Hyperbolic job titles have also given life to a new group of spammers who use them to convince companies they are trustworthy. But does it all come down to a name?

I'm sure Coast Digital is not the only digital marketing agency to get bombarded with emails from people who want to use their supposed expertise to improve our online presence. If only they'd visit our website, they'd realise it's what we do - day in, day out - and that we're good at it.

The difficulty with spotting fraudulent specialists is that SEO is a long-term strategy. This means it can take months before you begin to see measurable results. Of course, the phonies rely on this fact and they reap the profits for a few months before anyone even notices they may not be what they claim.

Ones to watch

So how do you distinguish the legitimate specialists from the swindlers? Who should you trust to look after your online presence and manage your digital marketing activities? One sure-fire way to find an agency that you can trust is to look to reputable independent sources, like New Media Age and its Top 100 interactive agencies list, or the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 (we're in both of them).

But whoever you do put your trust in, make sure they offer marketing you can measure and can confidently answer all of your questions. Most importantly, though, they should be able to demonstrate that they've walked the walk hand-in-hand with other clients, not just talked the talk to anyone that will listen.

When President Obama said that his trillion dollar stimulus spending plan would be transparent, an awful lot of people were sceptical. I was one of them. If he can’t get the healthcare reform needed by millions of people pushed through Congress, how can he deliver clarity on how – and where – a trillion dollars is being spent?

But on Monday, Recovery.org – a website that does just this – was relaunched. Today’s home page announces 35,449 projects that are valued at $107.82 Billion. Now, $107,820,000,000 is no small change, so how can the award of this much cash be transparent? 

That’s where the fun starts. Clicking on any area in this map will reveal how much has been awarded to your chosen state:

Clicking on California I am told there are 2,586 projects with a total value of $13,687,282,776. That’s right – the figures are down to the last dollar. But California is a big state, so how do I know exactly where the money is going within it?

In answer, I am presented with the map below, which shows where the funding has been allocated and how much is being spent:

San Francisco is one of my favourite places in the world, so I decide to see what is going on there. I click on the relevant county and I am presented with this table:

I can now see details of every one of the 322 projects that are running in the San Francisco area. I filter by city and specify San Francisco. There are 293 projects running in the city and I can pick any one and see how much is being spent. So I click ‘order by cost descending’ and I am shown this:

Fantastic! I can see that there will be $100,000,000 spent renovating the Federal United Nations Plaza and I can even comment on it. Of course, this is a large amount of money – but what about the smaller projects? Are they as easy to find?

I had a look for something smaller. It was just as simple.

In an instant I found a project for $7,856.

This is transparency of a kind I have never seen and, whilst it’s not as though Obama has opened up the Defense budgets, it’s impressive that you can drill down to such a level of detail.

I clicked on the smaller project, and found the following.

Superb. And it should make us start asking some questions in the UK. Such as where our taxes are being spent. Or where our money actually goes.

If America can deliver something like this why can’t the UK? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see exactly what projects were being worked on by local authorities? And by being allowed to comment on them, it would introduce a layer of democracy that we simply don’t have at the moment.

Recovery.org - I love it. So how about it Mr Brown? We could do with a bit of transparency at the moment...