Shortly after Nottingham City Council presented at the Google local government conference last year and announced their £15K windfall from AdSense, I took a close look at their site to see what kinds of ads were being served and how they were presented.

Variously, I found numerous ads that seemed to act against the direct interests of the council, preyed upon some of the most vulnerable local residents or were just downright sleazy or inappropriate.

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Sutton Council launched their long-awaited new website this week and it’s disappointingly dreadful in many ways. Possibly worse than anything in the design or content of the site is the sad fact that the new design has broken all the inbound links to the site, just like it did the last time and the time before that.

What does this mean, why does it matter and what can be done about it?

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