Figures from Hitwise at the end of November showed the Met Office to be central government’s most popular website, with traffic getting on for double that of Directgov. Now I must admit, I’m not a regular visitor to the site: I tend to favour Metcheck. But with the country apparently heading for a new ice age, I thought I’d drop by, and see their prediction for the days ahead. And I got quite a surprise:
But that’s not all. Every few refreshes, you’ll also see one of these:
I seem to recall they’ve had ‘house adverts’ for their own commercial products for some time. But this is the first time I’ve been aware of third-party commercial advertising on the site.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. They’ve clearly got healthy traffic levels, and they’re a Trading Fund: if advertisers want to hand over cash for a few pixels of unused screen space, hey – shouldn’t they be duty-bound to accept it? (There’s more information in this press release from September… including the rather startling suggestion that their traffic peaks at 19 million visits per day.)