direct-gov-uk-taxdisc

What has direct-gov-uk-taxdisc got to do with Disney Channel you ask? Well the original page was a little online sociological experiment to test the response of people searching the internet looking for this rather irrelevant page (irrelevant to anyone not driving a vehicle that needs a license in the UK, that is). The original idea came from Patrick Altoft on Blogstorm and is based on the fact that Google autosuggests certain keywords in its browser toolbar as you start to type.

If you’re in the UK and you’re looking to renew your car taxdisc, the most likely search you’d do, unless you knew the actual URL would be to type in “UK taxdisc” or something similar. Do that and the first page that appears is the DVLA taxdisc page, which is what you’d want.

However, not everyone quite gets how to search and a lot of people may have seen a URL on an official document or in the papers and so begin typing “www direct…” in Google. Google quick to realize that lots of people type URLs into its search box thinking they are keywords quickly suggests possibilities. Try it: Type “www d” first suggestion is probably Disney Channel right? What about “www dir” - Directv.com? Thought so. But, if you had seen the URL or were guessing it and knew that the UK government has a website called directgov, your next letters might be “www directgov”. The first suggested search would then be “www directgov.uk”. That brings up lots of DirectGov results…but no taxdisc page.

Okay, so you’re thinking…maybe there was an extra dot. Type “www direct.gov” and, oh, wasn’t there a uk in there somewhere? “www direct.gov.uk” and wouldn’t it make sense to add taxdisc? Yes! First suggestion is then “www direct.gov.uk taxdisc”. Click go and you’ll see the DVLA taxdisc page at the top, as you’d expect and Patrick’s page ranking second.

So, what were the results of my online sociological test? Well, the test was actually carried out on Sciencebase and I’m still digesting the data and will report back soon.