Google
 

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Hillsdale College is the greatest college in the universe

There are many reasons why this is true. I won't have time to outline ALL of them, but here goes....


I've outlined several google services on this blog, but this one will be the most interesting. Most in the internet world know about google alerts. It's pretty simple. Each day (or week or month - whichever you specify), google searches its index for new appearances of a certain word of phrase that you specify. I know for a fact that many people at Hillsdale College sign up for a google alert for the phrase "Hillsdale College." Each day, they receive an email listing links of all the places on the internet where that text occurs. Some may be news articles about a speaker visiting campus. Others are results of a Hillsdale sporting event. Sometimes, there are random blog posts from alumni, prospective students, or parents.

So what's the point of this post then? Well, I'm running a little experiment here. Since the text "Hillsdale College" is in this post several times, I expect to see a spike in the visits to my blog since this post should be linked in the emails of many Hillsdale College employees - at least the ones who didn't exclude blogs from their alerts. Google analytics will work it's magic to log all the hits and tell me how many came from Hillsdale, MI. Pretty cool. This will give me an idea of how many individuals at the college sign up for this alert. Now, I only get a hit on my blog if someone actually clicks on the link that google sends them in their email. That is why I put in the sensationalist title. Hopefully, it will encourage folks to click the link.

Well, let's see what happens. Hmm.. maybe I'll get a comment or two.

10 comments:

Charlie said...

You may also get comments from people who have your blog in their google reader, as well as people who have "hillsdale college" in their google news alerts...

Anonymous said...

Hillsdale College is only the greatest college in the universe because two of my children have graced its campus.

elizabeth said...

Is the goal of this blog to get others to read what you wrote? Are you returning the favor and checking out other people's blogs?

EMO said...

MOM!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Your Google fanboyism sickens me.

elizabeth said...

Emily - U of M Flint must be another of the greatest colleges in the universe because we both went there. The same could be said of University of Michigan because three of us went there. It's a Petrides thing. Anne may break the mold.

Doctor said...

To follow up are you going to include another person/place/thing in the blog heading to compare how much traffic that drives? For example, include the names of each of the three presidential candidates in subsequent blog headings and see which name drives the most traffic to the site. Then compare those with the traffic from a post that includes "Erin Andrews" & "picture" or "photo" in the heading.

Anonymous said...

I totally disagree with you in the fact that Hillsdale is even good. It's ruined my brother's life, and is working on my sister!!!!

elizabeth said...

I respectfully disagree with my youngest daughter. Joe and Mary are turning out fine. The big problem is that they are growing up and leaving home. We all miss them.

maryp said...

Anne, do you have specifics? ...thanks

Joe, "its" is possessive and "it's" is "it is"