Random Traffic Grows Real Traffic

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on how Microsoft was making some good/viral TV clips for their (at that point) upcoming video game Halo 3. Problem was that these videos were on TV only, nobody at the marketing agency thought it necessary to post them on YouTube, but enthusiasts corrected that. My blog post listed these videos, and can be found here.

Since I posted this article, it has increasingly gathered readers. 100% of them come via search engines, looking for “Halo 3” (I am amazed that some search engine ranks my article so highly! still can’t figure out who that is exactly). I bet you none of these viewers have any interest in marketing, start-ups or any of the other things tend to write about. So, is this traffic actually worth anything?

Turns out, the answer is yes. Since this traffic has increased, the traffic from search engines to my other articles has increased with exactly the same rate. In other words Halo 3 has the same proportion of overall searches now than it did a month ago. When you look at visits of ‘halo 3’ searchers to my site, this will give you some impression of how much the overall volume has increased:

Traffic

What this means. This is a virtuous circle effect. More traffic drives more traffic. An article that people pick up “for the wrong reasons” can indirectly drive high quality of traffic to the site. When more people click on my site via Google, my Page rank increases. The increased Page Rank drives more traffic. More search clicks increase my Page Rank, etc etc

I think this trend will continue until an equilibrium point is reached at which point the effect will diminish. Or maybe the search engine takes the traffic away again. In any case, until either of the two happens, I am happy to lean back and see the traffic grow. I actually didn’t post any articles this week partially just to see what would happen to he traffic: still growing. Nice.

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Live Can’t Find Cashback – But Google Does

The blogosphere is awash with comments on and reviews of Microsoft Live Search newest initiative, called Live Search Cashback. Basically, if you purchase products using Cashback you get…cash back.

Leaving aside whether this will increase Microsoft’s market share in the search space, let’s just focus on the single reason why Microsoft is lagging behind in the search space: quality of search results.

Microsoft’s search result quality is simply not as good as Google’s. As a matter of fact, Microsoft can’t even find its own Cashback programme. Don’t believe me? Here is a screen shot taken a few minutes ago:

Live Search

If you want to find Microsoft Live Search Cashback, you need to search for it at – suprise, surprise – Google:

Google Search

Microsoft seems to actually rely on Google to drive traffic to their own product. Quite unbelievable.

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A Good Reason to Like Microsoft Live

Having just returned from holiday in Portugal (very nice, by the way), I read about the fact that Microsoft live has received a face lift in the meantime. I thought I should check it out.

I was amazed. Not by the layout, but by the search result. The search for my family name – Lapinski – returned ca. 122,000 results. And my wife is in first place! 🙂 Well done Microsoft!!

Microsoft Live

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