Search relevance and It's a Small World [Wide Web] After All

In case you haven't heard, rock legends U2 released a new album last week.  Feeling the need to promote this release, they spent an entire week as the musical guest on the Late Show with David Letterman.  Sounds like a decent gig. 

Being a U2 fan, and also being one of those weird families that doesn't subscribe to TV, I decided to jump on YouTube one night and run a search for clips of each night's appearance.  I typed in the phrase "U2 Letterman."  The first clip that came up was a performance of the track, "Breathe."  While watching that, I peeked over at the related clips, and one of them was for the track, "Get On Your Boots."  I like that song, so I clicked on it.

Actually, the title of the clip I had just clicked on was "*NEW* U2 - Get On Your Boots LIVE David Letterman NOW ON iTUNES (The Wrecking)".  Yes, it was the right song.  No, it was not the right band nor the right show. 

The true owner of this clip was a band called The Wrecking, and they were performing a really cool version of U2's "Get On Your Boots."  Thanks to some nifty titling and tagging of their clip, they were attracting many people like me searching for the Letterman clips.  Normally I'd be super annoyed at something like this, as it's almost a form of YouTube spamming, but in this case I dug their version of the song enough to look into the band further. Here's the clip:

 

 

I started by checking out their website and I also looked them up on Rhapsody so I could listen to their album.  They actually have a great sound and I added them to my library for further listening. 

So is it a good idea to mis-title YouTube clips or web pages for the sake of search?  Does it compromise your integrity?  I'm not sure.  I did notice that this clip had been viewed 126,000 times already, which is a decent amount of exposure for an up-and-coming band. Like I said, I was impressed enough with the quality of the clip to forget the fact that it wasn't actually U2. 

What do you think?

Now here's where it gets crazy.  While I was watching this, part of me was thinking a few of these guys look strangely familiar.  I just kind of left it at that.  Well, today while I was back on YouTube to find the clip again, one of the related clips was a group called "Kingpin Wrecking Crew".  Now that caught my attention as I used to be the guitarist of a rock band (called Big Fat Jam - we were loud), and we had actually played a few shows out in the New England region at one point with a group by that name.  I really liked their sound especially due to the fact that they had an organ player, which I love.  After some further digging, I found out that KWC was now called "The Wrecking." 

It is indeed still a small world. And all because I don't have network TV.

The Name Game revisited

A little over a year ago, I blogged about the trend of tech companies using goofy names for their applications.  I specifically looked at the mobile-related industry.  Looking at five apps with names that kind of make sense, and five with what I would call "made up" names, I recorded their unique visitors for that particular month (Nov '07).  As promised, I am going to compare the numbers at that point in time to where things are now *.

Yes, I understand there is more to the success of a web application than its name alone.  This is just an experiment.  :-)

Okay, here are the "normal" names and November '07 & December '08 unique monthly visitors:

• SignalMap (signalmap.com)
  Nov '07:  2698
  Dec '08: 7858
  + 191%
  
• MindJot (mindjot.com)
  Nov '07: 546
  Dec '08: N/A (that's not good!)
  - 100%
  
• Smart2Go (smart2go.com)
  Nov '07: 2021
  Dec '08: 150
  - 93%
  
• BuddyPing (buddyping.com)
  Nov '07: 596
  Dec '08: 1051
  + 76%
  
• CallWave (callwave.com)
  Nov '07: 2,033,668
  Dec '08: 350,714
  - 82%
  
• Average % change overall: -1.6%

So far nobody looks like they are doing very well with the exception of SignalMap.  Now for the "madeup" names:

• Jaduka (jaduka.com)
  Nov '07: 4152
  Dec '08: 13,657
  + 229%
  
• Zedmo (zedmo.com)
  Nov '07: 4056
  Dec '08: 373
  - 91%
  
• Joopz (joopz.com)
  Nov '07: 4274
  Dec '08: 3473
  - 19%
  
• Foonz (foonz.com)
  Nov '07: 2706
  Dec '08: 1453
  - 46%
  
• Zannel (zannel.com)
  Nov '07: 21,867
  Dec '08: 27,695
  + 27%
  
• Average % change overall: +20%

In each category, only two apps actually increased their traffic, and in the case of Jaduka, it was enough of an increase to carry the "madeup" category into a +20% overall increase versus the 1.6% decrease for the "normals."  Only four of the apps overall increased their monthly visitors, perhaps a sign of the economy.  Who knows if the "madeups" would have performed better than they did if they had used more descriptive names for their apps, but in a random sampling they appear to have performed better than their "normal" counterparts.

Nothing too deeply scientific about this experiment, but interesting!

 

* All statistics obtained from Compete.com

Old Guys and the Internet

I am always impressed when people who are in their "later years" keep up with the times enough to use the Internet. My grandpa, for example, is probably a better emailer than me. He spends time online each day and knows his way around. That earns points in my book!

Another thing that really grabs my attention is when a company or individual that has been around for a while not only uses the web to market themselves, but actually does things that haven't been done before. I won't make any political speeches here, but 72 year-old Texas congressman Ron Paul has completely changed how politicians can use the web to get their message out there and gain support. Mainstream media companies have not really publicized him much, yet he has been gaining momentum thanks to outlets such as blogging, youtube, social bookmarking, etc. He has also set records for fundraising (I think he's raised $5 million+ in a day TWICE) using his website to collect donations. What's really amazing about that is the average donation size is something like $100, so it's a LOT of different people donating, not some giant corporation contributing most of the funds.

Just to illustrate the success of his web efforts, take a look at this Compete.com graph of daily web visitors to each candidate's website:



RonPaul2008.com (the blue line) is currently receiving more visitors than any other candidate website. It had twice the traffic of Hillary Clinton's website in December 07. I would say that's an achievement that is not really reflected in media coverage. Especially for an old guy. :-)