I write on a weblog called Small Business Trends. As the name implies, it is a very tightly focused business weblog. Janet Jackson typically doesn't make it into the Small Business Trends pages.
Not that she isn't an interesting topic. It's just that there's no obvious link between Janet Jackson and the subject matter of the weblog, the small and midsize business market.
Until last Sunday's Super Bowl, that is.
Imagine my surprise first thing Monday morning, when I got a call from a colleague who quipped that he would have visited the site sooner if he'd known it was R-rated.
I quickly pulled up the site, saw the recent referrers list, and just had to laugh. On it were some salacious and titillating referrer titles. All of them were from Blogcritics.
For those who aren't familiar with "recent referrers," the Small Business Trends weblog has a piece of code from Stephen's Web that tracks referring web pages. For my own use, I rely on site statistic tracking applications such as Site Meter. The recent referrers list is there simply for my visitors' benefit, because it lets them see where other visitors to the site are coming from. It acts as a kind of dynamically-generated blog ring.
So, how did the traffic from Janet Jackson posts in Blogcritics make it over to Small Business Trends? It seems that my name was listed on the Leaderboard as a top Blogcritics poster during December. Apparently people reading the Janet Jackson articles clicked over to my site from the link on the left side of each page. (The Leaderboard has since changed to list January's results and I am no longer on it.)
Article comments
1 - Mac Diva
Interesting. However, I fear those on the national boob photo hunt who looked at blogs where there were no titillating pics, including yours and mine, were disappointed.
As for Janet Jackson's right breast being the most searched for term in Internet history (see Eric's entry) that is just plain weird.
I am also wondering if some of us may be in for filtering problems down the road. Natalie's blog, possibly because it discusses homosexuality, is barred at Kinko's and at least one library. I hope the Super Bowl caper doesn't lead to more of that.