Minor Mystery Solved


Hot mom?

A few weeks ago I started getting a massive increase in the hits to this site. Almost all of this traffic was due to people looking at images that I host here. It tended to be the same dozen pictures over and over again, like the one above. I couldn't tell 'what' they typed into a search engine to find the picture and it was starting to drive me crazy.

I figured it out today. In fact, it should have been pretty obvious in the first place. From time to time I write a little comment under the photographs I post. Sometimes my tounge in cheek comments happen to match *extremely* common search terms on the net. Case in point, this lovely photograph of our friend Dianne Brown eating at the annual 4th of July BBQ draws a great deal of traffic to this site. Why you might ask? Simply because I humorously referred to her as a 'hot mom'. Uh oh!

The real key to drawing traffic based on image searches is to always upload *large* images. Nobody wants to look at little bitty 200 pixel images. As soon as you set Google image search to only show 'large' images, the number of hits shrinks by several orders of magnitude. If you were to type 'hot mom' into Google no photograph on my site might show up for pages and pages, buried deep in the back. However, if you filter on 'large imgages' there is Diane sitting on page number one.

I began looking on my site for some of the most common images that keep drawing traffic here. It quickly became clear what search phrase people were using. In most cases they were trolling for tittalation. I'm sure they were dissapointed to end up at the site of a wacky New Age Freemason blabbering about general nonsense. Sorry, this is not that kind of a site....

Nevertheless, knowing this, a person can certainly use it to their advantage. Through no intention on my own part I am now one of the top search results for any number of common phrases simply because I posted and labelled a large format photograph.

I have mixed feelings about this. These images were posted almost two years ago. They were, and are, for my friends and family. I don't know how my friends feel about being the #1 search result for 'hot mom' or some random person I took a photograph of at a Cardinals game showing up as the #1 hit for 'guys girlfriend'. I most certainly did *not* expect this to happen!

I suppose now that I know I can be more careful about how I label photographs I upload in the future. I can also, on occasion, take advantage of it as well.

The Internet spidey webs can sure seem a bit spooky at times.

Here are some of the others:


"Two hot chicks" #1 search in all images sizes (moderate safe search on)


"Guys girlfriend" This is the #1 hit in all image sizes! (Moderate safe search on)


"Drunk hot chick" This is the #1 hit in all image sizes! (with moderate safe-search on)


"Contortionist"


"Pimped boat"


"Movie Screen"


"Learned how to swim"


"Jiminy Cricket"

"Drive-In Theatre" and also "Terri Garr"


"Desparate Housewife" (I'm not certain how Diane is going to feel about this when she finds out...)

"African Drummers"

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks for the SEO tips! I'll do some experimenting. :)

btw. What analytics are you using? I find that the google analytics stuff is pretty fun to play with.
10:17 PM
John W. Ratcliff said…
The only analytics I'm using is a site tracker that is part of the hit counter I have at the bottom of the page. I haven't looked at the Google thing, I'll have to check that out!

One more thing. Currently photographs seem to take a really long time to 'come online' with search engines. It doesn't seem to be a one day thing like with blog posts.
7:39 AM
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