Further to this morning’s post about The Heath Ledger Experiment, here’s a graph of my website traffic so far this month.
As you can see, traffic roughly tripled yesterday after my little game. The data for today is only for midnight to roughly 4am, so that’s why it’s so low.
The increase in traffic from 15 January is due to Corey Worthington Delaney. Most of that is to the page Corey Delaney, freedom fighter (for the right to party), even though I’m much happier with Arrest of “teen party host†highlights stupidity of law.
The Corey traffic was sustained for several days thanks to continual news updates. Will Ledger traffic decline more quickly because the news will pass and I’ve stopped Google-fuelling it? Or will people get over the initial mourning phase and start looking for the jokes?
My gut feeling is that it’ll decline faster. Corey was an object of ridicule, while Heath Ledger is a respected actor whose personal life has been relatively straightforward. The main focus of the jokes has been childish, anti-gay stuff, and I reckon that juvenile attention spana will move on.
Also, at this time yesterday a Google search for “heath ledger dead joke” returned my page as search result number 4. Since then the media sites have been all over this story. Many mention his role as The Joker in the new Batman movie. As far as basic Google searches are concerned, “joker” and “joke” are the same thing. I’ve dropped to 6th place, and presumably will fall further.
Stay tuned…
Well the media circus is in full swing. I’m sure the TV tribute has already happened while I was out living my life. Any word yet on when The Heath Ledger Story will be hitting cinemas?
@Sweet Sister Morphine: These days it seems compulsory for every media outlet to try and out-do everyone else in the level of coverage. Even Crikey feels the urge — using the excuse that they’re writing about how the other media cover it.
Hell, I used it as an excuse too.
What’s wrong with someone saying “That’s not the sort of story we do,” and maybe leaving it as a two-line mention in the corner?
Because then they couldn’t use the old “Google spike experiment”.
Stil, you are such a media … tart …. (and “I’m a Laydee” so I don’t use stronger language)
😉
@Cassie ST: I believe the word you’re looking for is “slut”? I can’t possibly be a media slut: I used to work for the ABC!