If you arrived at this blog post expecting to see a fan-boy posting about the enigma that is “Britney”, you’re going to be disappointed. This post is a cynical exploitation of the crowd to investigate the effect Miss Spears name has on website traffic.
I did it once before, also mentioning the words surrounding Britney’s behaviour of the time - which effectively read like a George Carlin’s banned word list… among them of course were such innocuous words as “commando”, and “camel” - both of which spiked the traffic results last time. There are some truly strange people out there.
I’m wondering how the results of this test will compare against my test of a couple of years ago. I seem to remember that a certain Pamela Anderson was the most searched for “term” several years ago, as was Britney a couple of years back.
In some ways it’s a shame that the analytical tools expose such base behaviour in the great unwashed masses, but at the same time the information available to us helps target legitimate communication with the community.
I will of course write up the results of the traffic spike (or lack of it) in the next day or two.