Well, it may not be the world, but a lot of people have visited this blog in the last two days. Exponentially more than ever have before.
A few days ago I wrote a blog entry about the Virginia Tech shootings, offering some thoughts on the nature of gun control. Normally, I get 20 or 30 readers a day dropping by, but sometimes it’s far less. I’m not that disciplined about blogging, so days and the odd week can go by without an entry.
However, 335 people have visited this blog in the last 36 hours, all on the back of search terms that have mentioned the word gun. Here’s the list of search terms that drew people here yesterday. (I’m writing this at 8.30 am on a Monday morning, and already another 109 people have swung past since midnight last night.*)
gun 192
Gun 13
GUN 6
pics OF A GUN 2
gun control 2
virginia guns 2
virginia kill 1
how to make guns 1
dead guns 1
gun picture 1
Check out the search terms third from the bottom. ‘How to make guns’??? Okay. Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with the Internet in one single sentence.
Anyway, this is interesting, because it shows that lots of people are turning to blogs to find out what general opinions are regarding day-to-day news items showing on TV, in the press or on the Web. None of these visitors left comments and I don’t know how long they remained on the page – in other words I don’t know if they actually read anything or quickly clicked on – but either way, it’s interesting.
If you have a blog and want to inflate traffic to it, start using the word gun. Or better yet, post a blog entry entitled ‘how to make guns’
(* UPDATE: It’s now 3.4opm in the afternoon where I am, and the total number of people to view this blog in the last 24 hours is 455)
(* FINAL UPDATE: It’s now 11am two days after I first posted this and as of now, the total number of people to view this blog has been 676)
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