Twat-o-Thon and Liberal Conspiracy? The Answer
Yesterday I asked:
Reader question of the evening:
Why was “Twat-o-Thon” the top search term for sending people to Liberal Conspiracy in June?
And I hinted that the reason was not to do with Liberal Conspiracy itself. This article supplies the answer.
Here’s some food for thought first. The top search words on the same basis for some of the politics blogs on Wikio that I can test. I can only look at individual blogs that have their own second level domain, since that is the granularity of the compete.com figures .
Top Search Terms for UK Political Blogs
1. whoops a daisy saying
2. kakocracy
1. samizdata
2. pics of dj ace at peccadillos
1. bet on current events
2. political race betting
1. roaring fork peace coalition adam holland (what? )
2. harry’s place
1. vioxx and eu
1. are there alot of indian girls had sex before married?
2. conciousness
1. christopher hitchens, family
2. good arguments on censorship of video games
1. pros and cons of developing a national dna database drawn from birth
2. two unexpected uses of social network
1. apology blog (apparently people don’t acknowledge apologies very often )
2. putting the favicon in blogger
1. up skirts toutube
2. life after the price is right
1. porn affiliate (See this)
2. mp3 happy birthday
John Redwood’s Diary (aside: The “people” column says “Not Applicable”.)
1. 20th century european people
2. how a school lottery works
1. what causes hostility toward feminism in the us?
1. peter weatherall sue
2. piper looks like
1. shirley boothroyd barrister
2. muslims in europe who want sharia
1. forvik
2. historic co2 levels
The Twat-o-Thon Conspiracy
The Twat-o-Thon is actually a “Twat-o-Tron“, as noted by Dr Vee in the comments on the last post. The Twat-o-Tron is an automatic “BBC Have Your Say” comment generator. Here are three it just generated for me:
Added: Saturday, 12 July, 2008, 14:58 GMT
ITS OBVIOUS THAT LIBERALS ARE MAKING IT ILLEGAL TO BE PATRIOTIC BECAUSE THEY’RE RUINING BRITAIN… WE MUST GET OUT OF THE EU AND GET OUR COUNTRY BACK!!… WHAT HAPPENED TO GREAT BRITAIN?!
[Its_an_Outrage] Immigration Central
Recommended by 193 peopleAdded: Saturday, 12 July, 2008, 14:58 GMT
Mark my words.. did you know that Gordon Brown is being run by comunists because they wantto destroy us from within!. Three words: vote BN. It’s political correctness gone mad!
British Bulldog England
Recommended by 181 peopleAdded: Saturday, 12 July, 2008, 14:58 GMT
Its simple. I read that Arabs are just helping their cronies. Its time we put them in loony bin.
My country is being betrayed London, United Kingdom
Recommended by 265 people
So … Why?
A misspelling of a word is a far less competitive search than the correct spelling. An example would be “Tony Blair” with 13,700,000 results on Google, while “Tiny Blair” has 503 results. Someone on Liberal Conspiracy misspelt Twat-o-Tron (in this article probably - 1900 Google results), which meant that it was in the less competitive “Twat-o-Thon” niche (effectively zero results). Obviously others (such as me) misspell it the same way, because they had with a lot of visits from the term.
But somebody has noticed and corrected it, and now all the results for “Twat-o-Thon” point here.
And What is Useful in this Article?
Firstly, it shows that anybody who takes search results or web metrics too seriously is a nincompoop.
Secondly - and this will horrify purists and Latin Teachers - misspelling (or mispelling) competitive words can result in more visitors if you choose the misspelling often used by other people. It can be especially useful with easily misspelt names of public figures (Miliband / Milliband). On occasion I use several different spellings in the same article (often in a Title Attibute of a link, or the filename of an image) to make sure I cover all the bases.
Note that if you try this, you should have a look through the referring terms from search engines for your site first to get a an idea if anything is happening with typos you have made by mistake in the past.
A Real World Example of Creative Use a Typo
This case is well known among technical people, but perhaps not among a more general readership.
Have you ever mistyped “.com” in a domain name as “.cm” - such as mattwardman.cm and ended up on agoga.com.
The story behind this is that a savvy Internet Marketeer cut a deal with the Cameroon Government (the Cameroon Country Code is .cm), and all domains that don’t exist under .cm get diverted to the agoga.com website, which is used to display adverts.
An article that appeared in Business 2 in June 2007 quotes the Monthly Unique Visitors as 8 million overall.
Nice work if you can get it.
Categories: All WW, Hints and Tips, Humour, Internet / Technical, Media, Political Blogging
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