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Before I go any further fairness dictates that if you really want to know whether it will be a white Christmas this year you might want to go to Metcheck, the Weather Channel or BBC Weather.

This weekend The Guardian ran a fascinating spread.  ‘The Most Popular Story in the World’ tackled the subject of search engines and editorial.  Not long ago Charlie Brooker wrote a piece debunking the various 9/11 conspiracy theories.  The Guardian web-site was overun by the masses.  The following week Brooker decided to open his column with the line…Miley Cyrus, Angelina, Israel vs Palestine, iPhone, 9/11 conspiracy, Facebook, MySpace and Britney Spears nude.  The effect on traffic was unspectacular.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and that is essentially what all this is about, depends on using more than just lots of popular keywords.  They might have some impact on hits but visitors will ‘bounce’ (leave the site) as quickly as they entered.  Here at PRMediaBlog towers we’ve had several articles that have resulted in spikes in visitor numbers so we know at first hand what many of the drivers are.  You don’t just need keywords, you need inbound links too - if you have a blog by the way and you are interested in SEO feel free to link to this article!

The content shouldn’t just be link-bait either.  It needs to be engaging in its own right, plus Google and other search engines rank sites so track record is very important too.

So why is White Christmas in the headline?  Well headlines are important and it is just over two weeks to Christmas.  That’s about when long range weather forecasts start to get accurate so that’s when the searches should gather pace. PR has always used the calendar to provide hooks for stories so why should digital PR be any different?  I’ll keep you posted in the comment section on how this blog post does for visits.  I might even let you know if they all bugger off to the weather sites.

2001 doesn’t seem so long ago does it?  Well, not to me, but it does when you take a little trip back in time with Google.  To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the mother of all search engines, Google has re released the oldest index that it still has; the January 2001 version.      

It’s not often we get this kind of opportunity to roll back the years.  Looking for Facebook gives you just 1,810 results.  Not too surprising as it had only just been created and was available exclusively to a handful of Ivy League colleges.  Most of the links are now dead but you can get an idea of what Facebook looked like in the early days through the links to the Internet archive.  If you want an idea of how it looked at the time click here for the Harvard Currier House version.  Trust me, you’ll feel a lot happier about the latest redesign.    

Try looking for the iPod and you will only find 1,300 sites and none of them referring to the Apple music playing device because in January 2001 no one has an iPod.  There is a revolutionary new immersive entertainment device called the VRex iPod but you have to climb inside it to be entertained.  Searching for Flickr gives just 34 results and these are all spelling mistakes.  Searching for Youtube gives a great big fat zero.   Imagine a world without Youtube.     

Having had my fill of early new media, I wondered about the most popular searches of 2008 and how they might they compare.  How did ‘Britney Spears’ fare compared with the 87 million results we get now.  Well there were nearly a million results even in 2001 but what innocent times; ”Britney Spears is like many 17 year old girls. She loves shopping at the mall, romance novels, and long strolls along the beach.”  Want to really experience how things were back in the day?  One click will do it.