About Hitwise
Hitwise is the leader in online competitive intelligence. Contact Hitwise to maximize your online marketing programs.
Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific
Analyst Weblog
« The Apple Tablet - iWonder! | Chatroulette: Sensation or fad? »
My School drives growth for My School Australia
February 17, 2010
An inadvertent outcome from the launch of the Federal Government’s My School website was the huge traffic spurt to the social network, My School Australia.
The Federal Governments awaited education website, My School (www.myschool.edu.au) launched at the start of the school year, with much debate whether the website was simply a rankings table for schools limited value or if it serves a more substantial ongoing purpose.
My School publishes comparable results based on Australian schools with a statistically similar student population, versus being a straight ranking of schools from 1 to 9,000+.
As a parent I feel vindicated (perhaps a little smug) that my son’s school is performing well above statistically similar schools (and the alternate local schools). School children in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed by the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (www.naplan.edu.au), and the results are published annually on the My school website.
My School ranked as the 28th most visited website by Australian Internet users on 28 January across All Categories and the number three Education website by Australian internet users. Within five days it had fallen out of the top 100 websites (ranking 105th on 1 February) as the news and debate subsided, and has since fallen to 860th on 15 February.
The Computers and Internet - Search Engines industry delivered 61.4% of upstream traffic to My School in the week of its launch. Search terms containing a variation of My School (including misspellings), accounted for 87.9% of all upstream visits from Search Engines. The high level of branded search terms indicate the PR success / awareness of the My School website launch.
The top 20 upstream websites featured only five News and Media - Print websites, with Google.com.au and Google.com being the prominent referral websites. Social Networking and Forums were also prominent, with Facebook and the education specific network, My School Australia (myschoolaustralia.ning.com) capturing increased traffic and then referring visitors to the My School website.
The ranking of the social network, My School Australia, moved from 97,979 to 598 in week ending 30 January, an inadvertent by-product of the Governments My School launch. It has since dropped back to a ranking of 15,872 as of 15 January.
The debate will continue about the validity and value of the My School website, but there are 12,000+ happy social network members and one relieved father since the launch.
Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Tweet
Posted by Alan Long at 11:25 AM
| 
(1)
| 
(0)
Hi Alan. The rise in traffic to the original MySchool® website wasn't necessarily "inadvertent", it was deliberate and predicted by both parties. The owners of the original MySchool® registered trademark and website held talks with the Gov't Authority ACARA prior to launch and graciously and freely agreed to put a branded link right in the middle of the main page of the MySchool® site. We knew that it would raise bounce rate stats through the roof and do little for our ad revenue. Our other option was to have the confused visitors navigating all over the site and clicking on ads frustratingly trying to find the NAPLAN results. Better for us but bad for them. Rather than being an opportunistic website looking to cash in on confusion, MySchool® took the high road and worked with ACARA to streamline and enhance the user experience. All in all the collaboration was a success for both site owners and the millions of Australians looking for the test results. MySchool® continues to enjoy a good relationship with ACARA and the resulting 12,750 (and growing) subscribers may have stayed with the original MySchool® site for reasons other than accessing the NAPLAN results. Now all we have to do is get back into the top 600! Recent SEO work has paid off and dragged us back up to No2 on Google search. MySchool.com.au has been online since 2003, the current site has been online in its current form since late 2007. The word "MySchool" is a registered Trademark owned by the same Australian Company who own the URL myschool.com.au. The teal, black and orange colour scheme over white has been in use by MySchool® since 2004.
Posted by David Walkerden | February 27, 2010 07:58 PM