Category: Other

Companies that don’t “get” the web

Stationsvakt writes about Coop and its out-dated linking policy in which the company wants to control the style and typeface of any incoming links to its website. I can’t even manage to write something sarcastic about this attitude. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very hard to find other examples of silly linking policies (In Swedish, sorry) where companies demand that you seek their written consent prior to any linking.

ACNielsen:
Länkar kan endast ha formen av text och får endast ha beteckningen “ACNielsen.”

Meca, a retailer in automotive parts:
Länkning till Meca.se får endast ske efter Meca Scandinavia AB:s föregående skriftliga medgivande.

TT-Line, the ferry-service company:
Länkning till dessa sidor får endast göras efter godkännande från TT-Line.

(TT-Line should consider tidying up their website. The Dutch, French and German versions all link to the German domain, but in English.)

Update 31 Oct: Coop have now updated their link policy. Via Fyra nyanser av brunt.

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Wikipedia in top ten Google results for Sweden’s top brands

If you have an idea for a blog post, don’t sit on it for a month because if it’s a good idea, some other blogger will post before you do. A month ago I planned to do a similar study that Steve Rubel did regarding the largest advertisers and how high Wikipedia entries rank in the Google search results. I did the search but I just haven’t come around to publish it.

So instead I suggest that you have a look at Richard Gatarski’s very thorough investigation and report (in Swedish) that he published yesterday. He has done a good job and checked the 60 largest advertisers in Sweden and on average, Wikipedia entries came up before the company website. The average Google rank for Wikipedia articles was 9, which means they are in the important top ten results. For Coca-Cola, Hennes & Mauritz och Biersdorf, Wikipedia articles are as high as #1.

My results pointed in the same direction. I checked Sweden’s ten largest advertisers during Jan-June 2006 and 6 out of 10 are in the top ten results [search performed on Sept 17].

Unilever 7
Telia 14
KF 8
Ica 8
Volkswagen 16 (Volkswagen Beetle 14)
Volvo 7
Cosmetique France – (L’Oréal 7)
Viasat 14 (Viasat Sport 10)
Föreningssparbanken 11
Tre 28

[Found via Mymarkup.]

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Siba (avis på Avis?)

siba avis I reacted to the new tv commercial from Siba, a Swedish retailer of electronics equipment. It sounded like a complete rip-off from Avis’ classic pay-off “We try harder“. Siba’s new pay-off is “Är man inte störst så får man anstränga sig mer” or in English, “If you’re not the biggest, you need to try harder”.

After a bit of search on the net, I see that others have commented about this too, here and in the comments to this article at Resumé. Apparently Siba has been criticized before for plagiarising Apple’s “Switch” commercials.

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