Recently this site has experienced an increase in traffic due to a post about a hit reality TV series I made a week ago. Although not expected or intended, this article is now the number one search (if not in the top 5) on Google, AOL, Yahoo and other major search engines.
Lesson to be learned: the post you least likely expect to get replies is the one that draws people in.
Comments
Alan - May 8, 2003 1:37 pm
1. Refer logs are addictive
2. I thought the posts were all me and Steve making fun of your "problem" TV viewing.
Alan - May 8, 2003 1:37 pm
"Refer madness" - wanted to coin the phrase first.
nathan - May 8, 2003 7:15 pm
The phenomemon of a web log article becoming the top search result on a particular topic has been called "Googlewashing". See this article about it.
By the way, the correct term is a web "referer", not "refer" or "referrer".
Alan - May 8, 2003 10:50 pm
But there was no 1950's anti-drug movie called "Referer Madness" - unless there was a little noticed flick about medical GP's sliding work to specialists I have missed. Blog. Refer. Admin. HR. CEO. IT. It all sucks - but its English.
Steven Garrity - May 9, 2003 10:37 am
Accordig to the Free Online Dictionary of Computing (sounds authoritative, doesn't it?):
<dl>
<dt>referer</dt>
<dd>A misspelling of "referrer" which somehow made it into the HTTP standard. A given web page's referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web page contains the link that the user followed to the current page. Most browsers pass this information as part of a request. </dd>
</dl>
We've been using the term "Refer" as coined by Deal Allen from Textism.com, who name his referral tracking app "Refer" (presumably a play on words with 'reefer').
nathan - May 9, 2003 9:00 pm
Google might be planning to take steps to reduce "blog noise" aka "googlewashing" by indexing blogs separately. See this article.
Alan - May 9, 2003 10:48 pm
That makes sense but I am really enjoying being the #1 Alan McLeod on Google these days.
Stephen DesRoches - May 10, 2003 4:41 am
I took a quick read through that article and seeing how it's getting close to 5am I may have missed it but I'm curious to know how they plan on filtering out what is and what is not a blog.
Ernest Shaw - February 6, 2004 12:00 am
I like the Americal Idol Story that's pretty cool! I only wish that I could stumble over that kind of gold at my web site. I sell local and long distance phone service for fairly decent rates. I may have to click out some American Idol action my self and hope to bring people my way.
Cheers,