Fox Force Five

Never underestimate the enduring appeal of the 70's über-vixen.

One of the things I’ve inherited from working with Jake and his disturbed SEO ways over the last couple of months is a growing fascination for internet stats. Everyday in Charmed Central starts with the two of us pouring over Google Analytics and Blogger’s built-in stat-collector, trying to make sense of the chaos. When is the best time to ping out a Facebook update? What are the best hash-tags for pulling in referred traffic from bored Tweet-surfers? Who the hell is reading about us in China anyway?

And all this time we have been trying way too hard, it seems.

Amongst the myriad pieces of information that Blogger likes to keep you abreast of are the most popular traffic sources – the links that people follow to arrive at your posting. And something bizarre appeared there today in amongst the more predictable Facebook and Twitter entries.

Today two people paid the blog a visit simply because we mentioned Caroline Munro a couple of days ago.

That’s right. Someone typed Caroline’s name into Google’s blog search tool, scrolled down the list, and followed our link. And more strange is that this happened twice in one day.

Am I being naïve here? I know the internet is a big place, but do people regularly scan blogs for fleeting mentions of fading starlets? I can understand Google Images taking a regular pounding (and I need to be really careful here about my choice of language), but stalking them on Google Blog Search seems bizarre.

Ah. Actually, given that we’ve already mentioned Ms. Munro again in this post, they’re probably back. Hi guys (and I think I’m safe in assuming that they are guys). Sorry to waste your time. Again.

I mean, it’s not like we picked a contemporary honey either. Imagine what would have happened if I’d mentioned Lindsay Lohan or Michelle Rodriguez. Or Kylie Minogue.

Now that’s how to mess with your stats. I foresee a big traffic spike in my near future and a thousand irritated comments. Shameless.