WikiLeaks:

Digital Diagnostic
Lara Zaccaria 14200346
MKT42050 - April 2015

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

Table of Content:

1. WikiLeaks..3
2. Technology Profile..6
3. Social Media Analysis..9
4. Mobile Technology Profile..12
5. Recommendations..14

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

1. WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is the non profit organization that became famous after the exposure of the cofounder, Julian Assange. The website and its channels are entirely dedicated to the
publication of the most obscure secrets of every government and organization worldwide.
The main purpose of WikiLeaks website is to divulge information without censorship,
supporting the freedom of speech and, at the same time, respecting online privacy and
security of its own users. For this reason, the most important function of the website is the
Google-style search bar. This is not the common news-dedicated website, but it is an
highly protected platform devoted to the respect of the user.
The website is also a gateway for other connected sub-domains: Edward Snowdens
Courage Foundation, the CableGate Search for journalists and the online shop to support
all the organization activities, such as Assanges legal expenses and technical costs of
maintenance of the website.
After the Banking Blockade in 2010, the website accepts donations only through affiliated
and authorized websites, such as Freedom of Press Foundation and the Bradley Manning
defense fund. The accepted methods of payments vary from US Dollar, Euro, Bitcoin and
the less known Litecoin. There are
also different platforms that
currently supports the donation
process: Paypal, Google
Checkout and MoneyGram.
On the main search index, such
as Yandex, Bing, Google and
Yahoo, WikiLeaks is performing
poorly for the main related
keywords, such as information
leakage, julian assange, war
leaked info.
In fact, the website disappears
from the first page results or
appears just on the bottom
delineating a poor SEO strategy
at on-page level.
WikiLeaks PageRank is 82/1001,
and it is performing very well in
1 WikiLeaks analysis on MOZ Open Site Explorer, https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/links?site=https%3A%2F
%2Fwikileaks.org
%2F&filter=&source=external&target=page&group=0&page=1&sort=page_authority&anchor_id=&anchor_type=&anc
hor_text=&from_site= accessed 04-04-2015

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

terms of inbound links. Considering all the important facts that went public through the
platform, it is obvious that BBC, The Huffington Post and The Guardian are the latest
websites linked to WikiLeaks.
As previously reported, the website has different issues at an On-page SEO level2:
Heading tags
Meta Description
Title tag
Keywords

Too long or too short heading tags

There is not a meta description
The websites title tag is too short
Keywords are not well integrated in the title tag, meta description tag
and heading tags around the website.

Considering the website usability, navigation and SEO strategy it is possible to say that
the creators of WikiLeaks didnt exploited this functions to obtain a well performing
platform. In fact, it seems that they didnt dedicate efforts to do it, probably because of the
nature of the organization and the primary role that they wanted to give to the news.
Furthermore, when the sitemap.xml or the robots.txt is requested, it gives a 404 error
page.

WikiLeaks QuickSprout Analysis, http://tools.quicksprout.com/analyze/wikileaks.org%2F accessed 05-04-2015

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

It is clear that, in this case, WikiLeaks wants the entire website to be crawled by Google
Bot, still it is advisable to create a robots.txt file in order to avoid the crawling of different
parts of the website, such as the membership section or the error pages.

Image 1: Example of WikiLeaks robots.txt

Image 2: Example of WikiLeaks sitemap.xml3

Also, there are no instructions regarding bots for advertising purposes because the
website will never track, measure or sell data from its users. In fact, Google Analytics is
not installed, as well as Google AdWords. For this reason, it is not possible to locate ads
code using the Developer Tool.
As reported above, WikiLeaks has no sitemap.mxl, for this reason it would be better to
have one in .xml format, because the website has a lot of pages, instead of one in HTML.
In fact, considering the size of WikiLeaks, it would probably be better to have more than
one sitemap.
Considering the nature of the organization and its purpose, it is understandable that they
dont use ads for advertising purposes on the main website.

WikiLeaks Sitemap created with XML Sitemap Generator, https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/details-wikileaks.

1260454.html accessed 05-04-2015

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

2. Technology Profile
WikiLeaks uses HTTPS as communication protocol, the website is built respecting the
HTML5 standard (See Image 4) and it redirects traffic to an HTTPS/SSL version by default.

Image 4: The DOCTYPE with the meta charset, http-equiv and name attributes are
indicators of the usage of HTML5 standard.
The website uses nginx as a HTTP web server and the position of the companys servers is
unknown for security reasons, the last disclosed position was at Pionen White Mountains
data centre in Sweden.

Image 5. Entrance of the last known position of WikiLeaks servers in Sweden.

As CMS, the company uses SPIP4, an open source publishing system perfectly adapted for
collaborative working in a multicultural environment such as the WikiLeaks team.
In terms of CSS usage, the website has a lot of unused CSS rules that should be reviewed
and fixed.

WikiLeaks Analysis on BuiltWith, http://builtwith.com/?https%3a%2f%2fwikileaks.org%2f accessed 08-04-2015.

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

Image 6 CSS Audit:

The website uses Bootstrap, one of the most popular CSS, HTML and JS framework for
developing responsive and mobile friendly websites. WikiLeaks has a personalized CSS
file after the default one.
Image 7 Bootstrap:

In terms of JS, WikiLeaks uses jQuery, the famous JavaScript library that let simplify all
the processes regarding animations, Ajax interactions and so on. Also, to support audio
and video content, the website uses VideoJS, which is a simple HTML5 video player built
both with JS and CSS.
As specified in the previous chapter, WikiLeaks has currently no cookies and consequently
no need of an ad hoc privacy policy.
Also, even though WikiLeaks is not an ordinary website, it is advisable to implement
some changes on its home page in terms of navigation and usability. First of all,
considering the fact that the websites main focus is spreading leaked news, the homepage
should be more clear with different sections for every type of news: editorials, latest
releases and archives. As suggested in the WikiLeaks homepage mockup (Image 8), these
changes should be completed with a section dedicated to the selection of relevant news by
country. In addition to these improvements a box for the latest events, meeting or scandals
should be positioned in the top right corner, to highlight the most important news of the
week selected by the readers.
Furthermore, the menu bar should be more clear and concise with simple sections and,
most important, a link to every social media platform the organization exploits. In
addition, a link to news feed and a fast way to send an email should be implemented.
In conclusion, the info menu option in the menu bar, should have a drop-down menu
with the following site links:

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

Image 8: WikiLeaks website home page mockup.

How to Search: an explanation page on how to search information within the website
for journalists, users and lawyers5;
Advance Search Tips: for a specialized audience;
Search by Argument or Country;
WikiLeaks World Of Tomorrow: link to a series of talks hosted by Julian Assange with
some of the worlds most important people that are shaping the future of technology
and human rights;
Justice 4 Assange: direct link to support Assanges court case;
Courage Foundation: website that supports Edward Snowden and its court case;
Free Press Foundation: organization that supports WikiLeaks;
Secure Ways of Contact: a detailed guide on how to approach a WikiLeaks
spokesperson and how to send documents and other files.

WikiLeaks is used as evidence in a huge number of court cases. http://www.brickcourt.co.uk/news/detail/court-ofappeal-finds-wikileaks-cables-admissible-but-dismisses-chagos-islanders-mpa-challenge accessed 12-04-2015

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

3. Social Media Analysis

In terms of Social Media channels, WikiLeaks uses:
WikiLeaks Social Media Channels
Facebook

2.673.008 Likes and 21,291 People Talking About This

Twitter

36K Tweets, 2.54M Followers

Reddit

32.965 Subscribers

Flattr

8.033 Flattrs Received from 2.334 People

YouTube

27.353 Subscribers

The website has a remarkable social media impact spread across different channels6:

On Twitter, the online sentiment is positive, generally in favor or WikiLeaks activities.

Considering that one of the biggest clusters of discussion is on Reddit, a social network
analysis is conducted to define the sentiment and the patterning of links among
6

WikiLeaks Quicksprout Analysis, http://tools.quicksprout.com/analyze/wikileaks.org%2F accessed 13-04-2015 &

Wikileaks on Klout, https://klout.com/#/wikileaks accessed 13-04-2015.

WIKILEAKS - DIGITAL DIAGNOSTIC

participants of the IAmA I am Julian Assange, publisher of Wikileaks. Ask me anything.

because Julian Assange is the major influencer of the entire WikiLeaks community.
First of all, it is important to note that Reddit is an open social network dedicated to news
generated by the users and considering the time constraints and the scope of this project it
is advisable to refer to a pre-existing paper Information and Social Analysis of Reddit by
Troy Steinbauer to note that, in terms of user comment graph analysis, the loose graph
model prevail7 site-wide.

Image 9: Steinbauers User Graphs Statistics chart (Entire Reddit)

With this in mind, it is
interesting to run a sentiment
analysis on the selected IAmA
to understand what kind of
feelings prevails8.
The results show that 90% of
participants are open to a
peaceful dialogue and are
prone to challenge the status
quo with relevant suggestions
and clear solutions to real-life
problems.
It is also interesting to note
that 48% of participants are
conscious of the importance of
the discussed topics.

For Loose Graph model it is intended User A commenting on User B is undirected edge between A and
B (Steinbauer, 2011)
8

IBM Watson User Modeling Tool, http://watson-um-demo.mybluemix.net/ accessed 18-04-2015.

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Image 10: Watson User Modeling Tool Analysis of the selected IAmA.

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4. Mobile Technology Profile

Currently WikiLeaks has no official app and the
website is not mobile-friendly at all. The main
logo should be optimized as well as the
navigational functions. The differences from the
website are minimal, the mobile version gives
more importance to the Archives 2006-2010
and Editorials sections and less to the latest
releases.
There are also problems at JavaScript and CSS
level that should be fixed9.
WikiLeaks has no direct competitors because it is
the only organization that actively release the
most hidden secrets from all around the world.
This does not mean that the organization can not
learn from other players in the online news field,
such as Der Spiegel or the CNN mobile version.

Considering that the main focus of the organization is to

reveal governments secrets it is vital that the website
and the mobile version reflect this intent in a simple and
clear way. Der Spiegel is a very good example of it,
giving a RSS feeds-style to the mobile version, which is
the most easiest way to do it.

Google PageSpeed Insights Analysis, https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F

%2Fwikileaks.org%2F accessed 18-04-2015.

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Image 11: Example of possible WikiLeaks app based on the websites RSS feeds10.
(Created with Windows App Studio).

10

Windows App Studio, WikiLeaks App Project. http://appstudio.windows.com/projects/ed141003b1ff-4b50-84a0-65ce5f9ef610/generation accessed 18-04-2015.

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5. Recommendations
As already suggested in the previous chapters, there are different improvements that
could be implemented:
Areas of interest:

Improvements

SEO

Better on-page optimization with a clear HTML structure and website

hierarchy according to the scope of the website (Refer to image 8)

Navigation and UX

More compelling navigational system with a simple menu to navigate both

on the website and the mobile version as specified in the relevant chapters.

Mobile version

- Creation of a better mobile version using the recommendations on Chapter 4.

-

Mobile App
-

Social Media Channels

Technology

Creation of a dedicated Mobile App with different interfaces according to the

target market: journalists, lawyers and citizens.
RSS feed and Recommended section in the citizens version
Integration with SM channels to make share-ability easier with the presence
of dedicated buttons within the articles.
Clear indication and connection to the SM channels on the home-page
Dedicated team for the administration of the channels to boost lead
generation and donations
Pay with a Tweet option on the most relevant reports to spread the word
faster
WhatsApp Messaging System to reach a wider audience

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