How [not] to use Google

It amazes me that, several years on from the emergence of Google as the pre-eminent way of finding out any information, some people still have no idea how to use the results it throws up. Every week at the office, we get one or two phone calls asking us if we are the Thurrock Urban Development Corporation. This is because if you google 'Thurrock Development Corporation' our project is the first item that comes up. Go to the site and find the 'contact' section and you get us.

But how is it not possible for these people to realise that our project has quite clearly nothing to do with the workings of the actual UDC, who were neither our client nor have ever endorsed or funded our work (much to our frustration and that of our 'real' clients). It is the sad fact that no government quango would ever have such a beautiful, clear, informative and creative website as that of our project - but you would expect that even if the viewer did not think of this, every literate person might read a little of the website content before they pick up the phone.

But it does amuse me that some people think that our small office are the UDC. Maybe we should be exploiting this as a project, to see how far we could get developing an 'alternative' development plan for Thurrock using the people who phone our office. After all, the UDC doesn't seem to have done anything in the year and a half that it's been around...

Comments

Anonymous said…
how can you compare a website for a specific project with a massive, multi service delivery organisation? I'd have found visionarythurrock beautiful, clear, informative and creative had my expectations been raised loftily high - as it was I started wondering about the up-down arrows which bring up menus of in some cases one choice, and which visually block the parent link, hmmm...