I am a big fan of Google Trends. This cool little utility shows you up to the minute lists of the most popular search terms being used in Google's search engine. It will even indicate if there is a regional bias to the search requests. Often you can be clued into the latest news, pop culture and main stream, before it hits the TV airwaves by monitoring the list. I first learned of Heath Ledger's recent death when I looked at the list and the top 5 searches were all combinations of the actor's name and euphemisms for passing on.
Another feature of this tool is that a click on any of the popular terms on the list will take you to composite search result page for the term. The composite page will include, in separate sections, the top couple of search hits from the web, from Google's news aggregator, and from a search of blogs. The problem is that the search results from blogs are never useful. The top hits are almost always spam blogs. Many of them are nothing more than reproductions of the Google Trends list and lots and lots of ads. So this got me to thinking.
Obviously people are putting these automatically generated nuisances up because posting nonsense content around top search terms is sufficient to get enough eye balls on the ads to make money. But, what if, the goal wasn't in making money. What if the goal was just eyeballs. Getting people to actually see something you created, no matter how frivolous or meaningless. Could you get people to come and read your words if you did nothing but post about the hottest search terms of the day? I am sure someone out there can answer this already. But I thought I would give it a try. I already have a blog that noone reads and I don't expect anyone to read. That is fine with me. What is the worst that could happen by baiting your blog with things people are already telling you they want to see? I would have two blogs that noone reads? At least I am not contributing to the growing internet landfill fill of robot blogs, link farms, and ads disguised as content. Not that I would call future ramblings on this blog quality material but by adding my 2 cents about the day's hot topic, I am contributing to the internet's hive mind, not lobotomizing it. With that, let's get started and see if anyone notices.
Another feature of this tool is that a click on any of the popular terms on the list will take you to composite search result page for the term. The composite page will include, in separate sections, the top couple of search hits from the web, from Google's news aggregator, and from a search of blogs. The problem is that the search results from blogs are never useful. The top hits are almost always spam blogs. Many of them are nothing more than reproductions of the Google Trends list and lots and lots of ads. So this got me to thinking.
Obviously people are putting these automatically generated nuisances up because posting nonsense content around top search terms is sufficient to get enough eye balls on the ads to make money. But, what if, the goal wasn't in making money. What if the goal was just eyeballs. Getting people to actually see something you created, no matter how frivolous or meaningless. Could you get people to come and read your words if you did nothing but post about the hottest search terms of the day? I am sure someone out there can answer this already. But I thought I would give it a try. I already have a blog that noone reads and I don't expect anyone to read. That is fine with me. What is the worst that could happen by baiting your blog with things people are already telling you they want to see? I would have two blogs that noone reads? At least I am not contributing to the growing internet landfill fill of robot blogs, link farms, and ads disguised as content. Not that I would call future ramblings on this blog quality material but by adding my 2 cents about the day's hot topic, I am contributing to the internet's hive mind, not lobotomizing it. With that, let's get started and see if anyone notices.
No comments:
Post a Comment