Over the last a few weeks, a surprising traffic jump occurred for two of my lenses.
First, my Starbucks and Clover page jumped way up in hits. When I looked in the traffic stats, it seems that suddenly, everyone is searching for the same information — where are the Starbucks with those darned Clover machines? Well, I had originally thought about posting the locations since I am in Boston, where there are three such stores. When I looked around online earlier, I couldn’t find any information on it at all! Finally, I found it on a food review site. However, I had already asked a local Starbucks barista for the information. Well, I posted it on my lens with links to Google maps (I decided not to use the module) and within hours, people were clicking on it. There are also stores in Seattle, and a little digging got me those addresses, too. Still, tons of search terms are looking for Clovers in San Francisco Starbucks and New York Starbucks. Sorry, kids. Not available yet. Yes, I know there are supposed to be 80 in San Francisco by the end of the year and it’s almost August!! I have included a link to help you find Clovers in your area, though. Just not Starbucks with Clovers. I think interest in my lens may have also spiked because of a recent Wired article about Starbucks and the Clover. All I can say is, I <3 Google Alerts for keeping me in the know.
Another lens with a small traffic burst was my Pool and Billiard Trick Shots lens. All of a sudden, it seemed, everyone’s looking for the World Cup of Trick Shots 2008. Well, you pretty much can’t find any information about that on the web. The official website is so old that it’s not even fully updated for last year’s event. Actually, I don’t have much information on the 2008 event, either. Only time and place. It’s given me an idea for an expansion lens though. It seems to me that the World Cup isn’t covered well at all on the web, especially since it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry. *gasp* I know! I also wanted to find out why people were so interested in the World Cup of Trick Shots all of a sudden. Well, I didn’t need to wait long since several of my friends mentioned the next day that they caught last year’s event on ESPN over the weekend. With that in mind, I found a place online with pool tournament TV schedules and made a link to that.
My bottom line is that you can learn a lot from traffic stats, and when you link it up to news, you can start to understand the ebb and flow of visitors to your lens. Also, though, it pays to have unique information, even if it may be more difficult to get unless you’re an insider. And, those lenses with low traffic numbers, don’t give up on them. They just might have a good day or two or more!
