Downing Street website is deficient, newspaper says

The website for the prime minister's office in England is "poorly optimised", according to one of the country's leading newspapers.

A recent Guardian report details the 10 Downing Street website's search engine optimization strategy, finding that many keywords the site uses to increase search engine visibility have little to do with the function of the office. The website lists "tattoos", "piercings" and "polish armed forces" as some of its keywords that tell search engines what the website is all about.

The 10 Downing Street website provides a portal to communicate with Prime Minister Gordan Brown.

Writer Julian Sambles says that the website lacks many of the standard practices that are key for a website to serve the public well.

"The structure of articles on the Number 10 website is poor", says Sambles. "The homepage has no title tag other than the URL of the site - the first time I have ever seen that - and articles are poorly optimised, lacking keywords and descriptive text. All of this is fundamental good practice in search engine optimization".

The website of a member of Prime Minister Brown's conservative opposition party has experienced trouble as well. A website that the conservative party set up to inform readers of Brown's dealings with a powerful union was recently attacked by hackers.