When is a Website the Answer?

I’m sure a lot of people heard about this the other day.  I was driving home from work and heard on NPR that New York is dealing with a pest it hasn’t heard from in awhile.  Bedbugs!

Now these critters are nasty, so the New York city public health department is waging a public war against this health threat.  To do this, they have a multi-pronged public education plan.  What I thought was interesting was how they decided to build their own website to educate people about this.  My first thought was that this move makes sense, but after thinking about it for the rest of the drive home, I quickly became convinced that the New York public health department missed a HUGE opportunity to reach New Yorkers with their critical message.

First off, the idea for a web site comes from an April 2010 report from the New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board Report to the Mayor and City Council which states in recommendation 1.3:

“Launch and Maintain an online Bed Bug Portal devoted to bed bug facts and resources.  A NYC Bed Bug Portal would provide an accurate, consistent and accessible source of information to the public”…”a Bed Bug Portal would serve as an outreach tool where residents could download fact sheets and educations resources, view instructional videos or slide presentations and find other documents.”

So what’s the rub (besides the use of the word “Portal” to describe a website?) Building a new web site wasn’t the answer.  It’s a tactical response to a strategic problem.

Practically, they failed to launch with a traffic generation strategy.

1. A quick search for terms relating to New York and bed bugs reveals not only that this new web site is nowhere to be found on the first, second, third or fourth pages of Google, but it reveals there are a lot of other beg bug related websites out there.  Many were created by average New Yorkers for New Yorkers.
2. All of the press releases that I’ve seen relating to this announcement don’t include a URL at all.  They’re not telling people the name of the web site.   See what I mean right here.  NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128828526
3. Why will someone visit their site over another site?  There’s a lot of competition for the term “bed bug new york” in search.

So here’s my recommendation.  Wikipedia wins search all the time.  Why not just fill the Wikipedia article with all of the reputable, quality and trustworthy bed bug information?  Why try and win search from scratch when you can use the site that wins search to communicate your time sensitive, critical and trustworthy information.  Spread the word, building a website isn’t the answer.