Fun_People Archive
1 Feb
A Way To Increase Your Site's Traffic

Date: Thu, 1 Feb 96 19:10:23 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: A Way To Increase Your Site's Traffic

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Zach Romans <romansz@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com>
From: staff@lectlaw.com (Jeff Liebling)

Hi folks,

I was checking the Library's log file the other day and was surprised to
see that one file in the Library's Reference Room's "Legal Terms &
Phrases" area had over 3 times more hits than the next most popular one.
I checked and was puzzled to find it was the file containing the
definition of "sexual act" -- until I realized the anomaly was created by
search engines fulfilling the prurient requests submitted by net-surfing
horny adolescents, tele-evangelists and Republican politicians.

This was little more than a minor curiosity until I realized it could be
a heaven-sent solution to every webmaster's constant quest for ways to
increase a site's usage stats -- while avoiding the hard work that
creating/adding actual useful content requires (besides building/copying
link collections).

Realizing that most people never notice the <title></title> part of a web
page I experimented last night and for a few hours changed one of the
Library's least visited pages from "<title>LLL's Topic Area On Antitrust
Regulation</title>" to "<title>LLL's Topic Area On Antitrust Regulation,
Really Dirty Sex, Repulsive Sexual Acts and Disgusting Porn</title>".

When I checked the log file today I discovered that the hits on the file
increased from the usual 1 every 3 or 4 hours to 117 hits for the 3 hours
of the change.

I intend to continue this experiment using different words and phrases to
determine those that give the best results and will keep the list
informed.  However, I'm pretty conservative and foresee my imagination
running out of phrases quickly. So, if anyone else out there that wants
to experiment using their site and share the results I'm sure it'll be
appreciated.

Oh yes, if you decide to join the experiment you should probably include
a notice on the page stating something like: "All complaints about this
page's lack of sexually explicit content will be immediately forwarded to
the Department of Justice". I overlooked doing this and today's e-mail
was overflowing with some rather peculiar and singularly offensive
messages.

Thanks,

Jeff

© 1996 Peter Langston