Metrics Part 1: Measuring the quality of web sites

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Metrics Part 1: Measuring the quality of web sites

Posted on Sep 15, 2006
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A couple of months ago I blogged about Silktide. If you haven't heard of Silktide, its pretty interesting. Its a validation tool that collects a host of factors and tries to give a score for a site.

Its part marketing exercise for Silktide (though they score pretty low for themselves), and perhaps not a very valid tool, but it is a great way to encourage designers to improve their code to meet standards and become more accessible. After I made my original blog post, a few designers had emailed me telling me that they had started using Silktide on their Joomla sites. I thought I would take a fresh look and see who was starting to appear in the list. It is great to see that there are seven www.silktide.com/tools/sitescore/top-sitescores.

1	www.cssplay.co.uk	9.8
2	www.rockettheme.com	9.8	www.compassdesigns.net	9.6	www.joomlashack.com	9.6	www.55thinking.com	9.3	www.joomla.org	9.1	www.deanmarshall.co.uk	9.0	www.broxden.co.uk	9.0	www.netscape.com	8.8

Try your own site out, then see if you can raise your score by improving the page's accessibility.

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abrabara said:

Try out the big names in the industry (e.g. Yahoo.com, MSN.com, CNet.com, among others) and you'll be surprised with the results.

October 09, 2006

abrabara said:

According to Silktide, Google is quite popular as a site but lacks keyword popularity. Look at this:

"Based on your webpage title, we guessed that your website / company name is "Google". In the text on your homepage, these appear to be the most significant phrases:

1. web pages
2. business solutions
3. programmes business
4. advertising programmes
5. tools search
6. language tools
7. preferences language
8. news froogle
9. images groups
10. groups news

We took the top 3 phrases and searched for them in Google, along with your website/company name.

No matches on Google were found at all.

The includes searches for Google, programmes business, business solutions, web pages."

They then go on to make suggestions for Google:

"Recommendations: If your website is more than a month old, you should always aim to score within the top 10 results for a search for your website or company name, at least. Firstly, make sure your website is properly programmed, and makes proper use of title, heading and meta-tags - in particular your homepage. Ensure that your website contains text-based content that is relevant to those searching for your website. Then submit your website to all the search engines and applicable free directories you can."

They then say that Google is "in violation of the current W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ... and unlawful according to The British Disability Discrimination Act".

October 10, 2006