Dear Kathy,

We would like to provide you with an update about Usage Data on Wiley InterScience and in particular the effect of some changes which were implemented by Google which would have affected your usage data during May and June 2009. In addition we would like to inform you about some differences in the way Google indexes Wiley InterScience compared to how it indexed Blackwell Synergy. You may find that these search engine activities have had an effect on the usage data for ex-Blackwell journals this year compared to last year for your institution.

In May 2009 Google implemented a policy to restrict linking to content with abstracts. As a significant portion of Wiley-Blackwell content does not have formal abstracts, such as Backfile PDFs and Online Books, and because this content could not easily be distinguished in our service, Google excluded all Wiley InterScience content from its search results. As Google is a key driver of users to content this had a significant impact on usage of our journals in May and June 2009. We have now been able to resolve this issue by helping Google to distinguish between articles with and without abstracts. We can confirm that July usage on Wiley InterScience is now back up to a level comparable with that of April.

Wiley InterScience interacts very differently with Google compared to the way that Synergy did. The main difference is the crawling of primary content. Google's web crawlers were allowed to crawl the blackwell-synergy.com web site directly whereas for Wiley InterScience content an agreement is in place for Google to start from the CrossRef website and index each article by DOI. This difference affects the ranking of our content in Google search results which consequently affects the discoverability and resulting usage data for former Blackwell titles, although it is not possible to exactly quantify it. The effect varies very much by customer and by content.

Another difference is that Synergy allowed referrals from Google to go directly to the full text of an article. For Wiley InterScience, all users are initially directed to an abstract or some other landing page. As a consequence, on Wiley InterScience users referred from Google may review the article abstract and choose not to view the full text, possibly creating a decline in full text views. Also, Synergy supported the federated search protocol Z39.50 which allowed content to be included in library search results and so help direct users towards relevant articles. Wiley InterScience does not currently support Z39.50.

We are aware that there are improvements that we can make to our online service which will help to increase the discoverability of our full text content and these are central priorities for our online developments.

In addition, we would like to inform you that the Searches count and Article Select count have recently been removed in error from usage reports on Wiley InterScience. We are working to restore these. Based on customer feedback we have aimed to simplify the monthly user activity report, reducing the number of items and renaming 'hits' to be 'page views'.

We hope that you find this message useful in helping to clarify some of the issues related to usage data on Wiley InterScience. If you have any questions please feel free to contact your usual Wiley-Blackwell Account Manager or visit www.interscience.wiley.com/contact

Best wishes,

Wiley InterScience Customer Support

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