Comments on: Jacob Nielson Rapidly Losing Credibility

By: Lee

Lee — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:30:24 +0000

Shouldn’t you spell his name correctly?

By: thomas swift

thomas swift — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:23:00 +0000

There are some decent points, however, he is probably looking to get work out of this from google or sixapart. Just like when he denounced Flash, then got hired by them.

I was drawn to your post from the title… But, he lost credibilty to me when “Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter “C” Unusable.”

nice blog too!!!!

By: Kelmon

Kelmon — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:06:54 +0000

To a degree, I guess it depends on WHERE your blog is hosted and what its purpose if for as to whether or not the recommendations/observations of Jacob are correct or not. Personally, I tend to agree with much that he said if you are seeking to create an information blog (either on the Internet or inside an organisation) - people will accept more of what you have to say if you are seen not to be hiding behind anonymity - the author should provide details to indicate that they are a credible source, although proving this is somewhat difficult. Equally, if you are expecting a regular audience who will refer to past articles (particularly important for an internal weblog), providing easy access to the important articles is vital.

I’m personally working on creating a custom weblog engine that will directly support IT project management in an organisation and much of the design recommendations made will be incorporated into this project.

However, if you are writing a “standard” weblog on the Internet, then I do agree that many of the points expressed aren’t that important. Regardless of this, I still credit Jacob of at least trying.

By: Adrian Sutton

Adrian Sutton — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 20:34:28 +0000

Jon,
You’re right, I do tend to agree with more than what the title suggests, see my comments on item 3. :) Headlines need to be interesting, not nessecarily informative - I’m much more likely to want to read a headline that leaves me guessing a little than one that tells me everything about the story.

I do like a biography and like telling people about it but the majority of my audience don’t care because they’ve just come in via search engines. If you were using your blog to build relationships though you definitely should have a bio and a photo. I think if the lack of a bio and photo are the two biggest problems in blogging today then we’re in a lot better shape than it appears.

The descriptive link text is actually a good habit to get into if nothing else, it’s not so much an SEO technique as an accessibility technique as screen readers tend to read the entire document then the user skips from link to link to find where they want to go next. Accessibility isn’t exactly a high priority for most bloggers though so it got a good advice with an extra comment.

It’s worth noting I was having a bad day yesterday and very nearly checked the “rant” box on this post.

By: Jon Dowland

Jon Dowland — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 14:53:08 +0000

Well I must not be the target audience, because I find most of what Neilsen says here to ring true. Having said that, you’ve written a few more ‘good point’ summaries than the beginning para would lead me to expect.

Re: biography, a short paragraph explaining a little bit about who on earth you are is a great idea, and one I am glad to see you adopt. Re: headlines; well, I certainly skip over headline titles that aren’t descriptive enough to be interesting when I’m looking at a summary in a newsreader. I think you’re essentially arguing the same point as he is. Re: descriptive link text; that’s an SEO really, and quite difficult too I find.