The 2006 HOAGIE Awards & Internet Popularity Tutorial

January 26th, 2007 at 8:29 am · DrHGuy · 1 Comment

What Are You Looking At?

Heck Of A Guy 2006: Made From Contented Posts

Now that the Heck Of A Guy 2006 review has considered the place of Heck Of A Guy posts in the blogosphere, why DrHGuy publishes posts, the quantity and categories of those posts, and who is reading the posts, attention turns to the content of the posts, especially which content proved popular, which received only polite applause, and which got the gong - and why.

The 2006 HOAGIE¹ Awards: The Most Popular Posts

The HOAGIE Award

In contradistinction to those presentations that attempt to build suspense by announcing the most prestigious prizes only after bestowing long lists of lesser honors (e.g., Best Dubbing In A Dead Language, Miss Congenital Anomaly, Most Likely To Win A Reduced Sentence For Cooperating With Authorities), the most coveted HOAGIEs, in keeping with Heck Of A Guy Posting Principle #3 — Start slow and then peter out altogether — are presented up front in fearless disregard of the perils of anticlimax.

Similarly, the Heck Of A Guy HOAGIE Post differs from other award shows by confessing — nay, boasting that designating the winner(s) is at best a crapshoot that invokes both the validity and reliability of the judges’ tabulations in an Eastern European Regional Figure Skating Championship, which may be unsurprising given that both processes utilize nearly identical pseudoscientific formulae to calculate scores.²

The Winners

The most popular 2006 Heck Of A Guy posts³ are — the envelope please:
[Click on a thumbnail to view larger image]

Someone You Should Know: Giles Brindley

The Very Merry Trio Airport Ad:
Chuck E Cheese Meets Twilight Zone On The Hallmark Channel

Anjani & DrHGuy FAQ

Urban Skills: The How-To Of Ketchup Decantation

Of Note

First, I should note that not only were these four entries the most viewed individual posts on the Heck Of A Guy Blog but also that there was a significant gap between this group and their closest competitors.

Second, I should note that interpreting the results of this popularity contest is at best precarious and may even be misleading. As one might already suspect from the discussion of web site statistics in Heck Of A Guy 2006: Who’s There?, these numbers offer no easy answers to which posts are most read. Even if one chooses, as I have, to use only one set of statistics (Google Analytics, in this case) to avoid dealing with the inevitable conflicts between counts by different services, and a simple “one visit by one unique visitor equals one vote” rule, ambiguity reigns. After examining the explanations in the next section, however, the astute reader will discover that this uncertainty can indeed by removed, revealing underlying bewilderment and confusion.

Third, I should note that working through the difficulties of determining which Heck Of A Guy content was most popular, I (involuntarily) began to comprehend just how significantly the Internet has changed the relationship of authors and readers (or web site content producers and viewers). The remainder of this post looks at a non-exhaustive list of factors that affect how viewers connect with specific content (in this case, the Heck Of A Guy posts) and how the viewing is quantified.

To many readers, especially those who have their own blogs or do any of the technical work on a web site, this material will be redundant while to others, it may be so unfamiliar as to be daunting. I hold that thinking through these ideas will be repaid with at least a nascent appreciation of how the internet influences its users. In addition, it will be helpful in grasping a discussion of the internet’s impact on the ethical and philosophical constructs of writers, but that’s another post for another time.

Those Confounded Confounders

Standard (And Non-Standard) Deviations
As already discussed in Heck Of A Guy 2006: Who’s There?, web site statistics are flimsy and not to be blindly trusted. I won’t address stats further other than to note that the currently used statistical programs were put in place in August 2006, placing earlier posts at a disadvantage.

Timing:
Ketchup Decantation, for example, was posted on 30 June 2006 (and continues to steadily garner hits in January 2007), but the next post on the most visited list is Line Rider Rides Again.⁴

Line Rider Rides Again did not come online until 6 October 2006; thus, it had three fewer months than Ketchup Decantation to accumulate visits. If both had been published the same day, would the results have been different?

Single Vs Multiple Posts:
The Very Merry Trio Airport Ad, the second most popular post, is an example of a single post with a single topic. Anjani & DrHGuy FAQ was third on the popularity list, but Music Recommendation That Will Make You Want To Kiss Me, the original post about Anjani, is a respectable 7th on that list. Hey That’s Not A Bad Way To Say Goodbye, A Muse Amused, and It’s Pandoracious were also part of the Anjani ensemble.

The stats also make it evident that while many who viewed one Anjani post viewed them all, others viewed one or more but not all five related entries, making equivalent counts impossible.

A Post Is Not A Post Is Not A Post:
Anjani & DrHGuy FAQ is not, technically, a post. It never appeared as one of the dated entries in the main column of the blog (where you’re reading now); it exists as a more or less constant page with a link in the sidebar under “Favorites.”⁵

And, there are not-Posts that are not-Pages. For example, because of search engine indexing methodologies, some folks entering certain search terms at Google, Yahoo, and similar sites were linked directly to Great Gifts For New Owners Of Digital Cameras.

Others, who entered similar or identical search terms were instead sent to Aha! Stuff.

Aha! Stuff is not a post but a category of posts, which includes but is not limited to Great Gifts For New Owners Of Digital Cameras. Aha! Stuff was also the fifth most popular web page at http://1HeckOfAGuy.com.

Ever wonder why the web page to which you were directed by Google seemed to have no connection with your search? Consider this: anyone directed to Great Gifts For New Owners Of Digital Cameras by way of Aha! Stuff this morning would be confronted by a Heck Of A Guy page with this post on top.

Great Gifts For New Owners Of Digital Cameras would be the fifth post on this page.

Seasonality:
Because The Very Merry Trio Airport Ad focuses on an ad for a Hallmark item specifically produced for the 2006 Christmas season, it is doubtful (if there is a God) that the ad will be viewed again except in the YouTube archives. Consequently, one would suspect that the popularity of the post about that ad will diminish rather rapidly. On the other hand, I expect ongoing interest in Ketchup Decantation to be my (hyper)link to immortality, outliving me by a considerable margin.

Referrer Weirdness — Timing:
None of the search engines promise inclusion and, in fact, Google (and, as far as I can discern, most of its competitors) routinely ban web sites — without notification or explanation — that, according to its algorithms, attempt to improve their rankings illicitly.

And, as I discovered (see Google’s Just Not That Into Heck Of A Guy), even if Google includes a web site, Google begins indexing that site when — well, when Google decides to begin indexing that site.

The Heck Of A Guy Blog was not indexed by Google until the latter part of July 2006, an event subtly heralded here by this post announcing Google’s #1 Heck Of A Guy.

Some content is only modestly affected by delays in search engine inclusion as long as it is eventually indexed. Whatever mental process compels internet users to search for efficacious methods by which to pour ketchup from a bottle seems to be primal and therefore constant. As a result, that post enjoys a continuing stream of Google referrals even though it was posted a month before Google began indexing Heck Of A Guy.

If, however, a post covers an item of topical interest, the lack of contemporaneous search engine indexing can be deadly. The popularity of The Very Merry Trio Airport Ad has been and continues to be primarily due to viewers referred by Google. If Google did not begin indexing Heck Of A Guy until three or four months after the Christmas season, it seems unlikely, given the seasonality of The Very Merry Trio Airport Ad, that it would have been viewed nearly as often.

More poignantly (to me, at least), a series of early posts that I thought were (and, on review, still think are) hot stuff that were published during Heck Of A Guy’s Dark Ages (AKA HOAG’s pre-Google era) and, being tied to (then) current events, were only seen by a limited audience — although both of those viewers did seem to enjoy the pieces.

These posts dealt with the contentiousness that arose when the Gay Games asked to use Crystal Lake, which coincidentally is near the town of Crystal Lake, which coincidentally is near Heck Of A House, as the venue for their rowing events.

The story, which appeared prominently in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times as well as many smaller publications and was picked up by other periodicals and national news sources, was a controversial issue in March and April 2006.⁶ Anyone searching Google for information about the story during that time would, of course, have found no reference to the Heck Of A Guy posts since it was long before Google listed this blog. By August (when almost all Heck Of A Guy posts were finally being indexed), whatever interest that might have once triggered searches for “Gay Games Rowing Crystal Lake,” which could have then led one to the high class hilarity Heck Of A Guy offered, had long since dissipated.

The highest ranking of any post in this sequence is the first one, Crystal Lake To Permit “Whatever Floats Your Boat” Rowing Event; it is the 368th most popular Heck Of A Guy post in 2006.

Referrer Weirdness — Frequency:
Even when search engines index a site, the frequency with which they re-index can be crucial. Some sites are re-indexed almost immediately while others are re-indexed daily, weekly, monthly, or even less often. The interest in a post published about the Chicago Bears winning their Conference Championship will dissipate as time passes; if the site isn’t re-indexed until two weeks later, fans will by then be searching for Super Bowl stories, not Conference Championship posts.

Referrer Weirdness — Social Bookmarking:
A number of services are organized such that one or more members can nominate specific sites that they believe other members might also find worthwhile. Digg, Del.icio.us, and Furl are among the larger, more popular services, but even less well known sites, such as StumbleUpon can cause a huge influx of viewers, a phenomenon which accounted for a majority of the viewers who checked out Someone You Should Know: Giles Brindley, the most popular Heck Of A Guy post.

Referrer Weirdness — Linkin’ (Web)Logs: Links to a post that come from sites other than search engines are important not only for the readers that are thus connected to that post but also because they are the most powerful determinants of ranking for Google and some other search engines. Yet, who links to Heck Of A Guy and who doesn’t may be determined by social connections, the energy and technical skills of a web site manager, contractual and reciprocal arrangements, whimsy, … . More about this later.

Next:
The next Heck Of A Guy 2006 post will focus on the Internet’s effect on creative expression, especially writing. Yep, metaphysics, ethics, the meaning of life, Monty Python, and all that. Makes one giddy with anticipation, eh?

Footnotes:

HOAGIE refers to the “Heck Of A Guy Internet Excellence” Awards↩
Incidentally, still another difference between selecting HOAGIE winners and choosing recipients of awards such as the Oscars or The Booker Prize is that the HOAGIE judges are unimpressed and uninfluenced by publicity campaigns so there is no need to waste money on PR firms or consultants. No, that money should be forwarded directly to the Heck Of A Guy Blog where it will do some good. A price list for HOAGIE awards of various sizes and description is available on request. Heck Of A Guy judges, being of an populist, free market mindset, will also consider bartering goods or services for HOAGIEs. Remember the HOAGIE’s guiding principle: Make me an offer↩
The most popular posts, in this case, are arbitrarily defined as those posts, other than the index page, (i.e., the most recent post, which is positioned at the top of the column when ones browser lands on http://1HeckOfAGuy.com) with the most unique visitors according to Google Analytics↩
No, I have no clue why Line Rider Rides Again was (and still is) popular. It was, after all, an afterthought, a quickie post that was a casual followup to Tiara Yes - Tonsils No, an entry that included Line Rider, Movie Mappr, and Mr Picasso Head as entertainments for a convalescing Hippie With Tiara. That original post was in the top 15% of the popularity list but was considerably less frequently visited than the sequel, which consisted almost entirely of four links to YouTube videos of Line Rider tricks. Line Rider Rides Again is by no means the only mystery ranking; in fact, I plan to publish a list of Heck Of A Guy posts, the popularity of which seem inexplicable.↩
For that matter, it’s significant that Anjani’s own contributions were entered in “Comments” rather than a proper post.↩
The Gay Games themselves took place in July 2006, by which time the storm had subsided, and interest had waned↩