August 21, 2006

[Off-Topic?] - Why All The Website Search Traffic? [Solved]

[Update - never mind - found]

The search traffic to my site skyrocketed this evening (Aug 21), for reasons I'm curious about. Did an A-lister mention my name somewhere, but misspell it? (FinkELstein, not FinkLEstein). If anyone knows the reason, please let me know, I'm extremely interested (sethf at-sign sethf.com, or you can post a comment below).

By Seth Finkelstein | posted in misc | on August 21, 2006 11:24 PM (Infothought permalink)
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)

Subscribe with Bloglines      Subscribe in NewsGator Online  Google Reader or Homepage

Comments

Well, I found you through this Metafilter comment about being stalked at work.

Posted by: Kris at August 21, 2006 11:53 PM

Ah, that looks like the reason, thanks.

Note those accusations are by a domain-hijacker who should have no credibility.

Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at August 22, 2006 12:05 AM

Good lord, what an ugly piece of work that Michael Sims is. I looked up his name in combination with slashdot, and he must be universally despised to draw such reactions from so many people.


Posted by: Shelley at August 22, 2006 12:32 AM

So how much extra traffic did you get?

And how does it compare to the traffic you'd get if you were linked to by an A-lister?

Posted by: Daran at August 22, 2006 09:33 AM

Shelley: Unfortunately, for too long it was apparently universally minus one person, except that one person was co-founder of Slashdot, so counted more than the rest of the relevant universe put together :-( :-( :-(.

Daran: It wasn't server-crashing levels, rather many dozens. It triggered attention because it was a big spike for one *referred* URL, which usually indicates some sort of spam-attack, but this time the URL was searches on my name. Remember, I said *search* traffic, not *server* traffic.
Depends on the A-lister. Some (e.g. Rosen or Searls or Weinberger) don't send huge amounts of raw traffic, but the readers they do send can make up in quality what they lack in quantity.

Update - Now the attacks are being credulously publicized, and there's no way I'll ever be able to counter them with the the real story. Even a he said/she said framing hurts me, since it spreads the smears, and Sims has nothing to lose (whatever malicious damage he can do to my reputation has no cost to him).
I probably made a mistake by staying out of the MetaFilter thread, I should know better, relying on truth-will-out simply does not work :-(.

Posted by: Seth Finkelstein at August 22, 2006 11:48 AM