Daily Archives: September 27, 2006

Search game score: US History: 37,600 US History Regents: 866,000 !

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I actually grew up in New York and took the New York State Regent’s Exams but even I didn’t initially make the connection when doing some research to see how our site U-S-History.com is doing for various “US History” searches at Google.

Incredibly, the number of Google (and presumably other SE) searches for “US History Regents” appears to be many times those for US History. us history.com was pretty high with 216,000 but the “US History Regents” win by a landslide.

Update:  I may have been confusing the number of *results* with number of *searches* here…

Generalizing from this, Myspace success, etc we are starting to confirm a hypothesis that suggests online search activity is high school centric. I’m suggesting far more than most studies suggest – perhaps due to survey response bias or time online issues or the fact many studies are looking for info about more commercially viable audiences than a 15 year old teen boy.

Blog readers vs writers III – Cicarelli’s fleeting fame

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Even thanks to a highlight by A-list blogger Jeremy of my AOL lawsuit post yesterday it looks like my Cicarelli “test post” is by far the top interest item here at Joe Duck, and it appears this is due to high placement at MSN for the term … Cicarelli.

This little Cicarelli experiment is suggesting to me that the gap between readers and blog writers is much wider than I’d thought, and it may change my approach to blogging.   Perhaps throwing in junk topic posts every so often is a good way to shake up search prominence even for non-junk topics.   Hard to test that but it seems to be happening – presumably as people who come for Cicarelli stay to read about …. Web 2.0 or Global health and welfare?!

But alas at Technorati we see that Cirarelli is down to search term number 9. I fear her fame, and mine, shall be as fleeting as a teenager’s search preferences.

Posts that contain Cicarelli per day for the last 30 days.
Technorati Chart
Get your own chart!

Mall of America on Travel Channel

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Hey, I really like the Mall of America.    When we visit our Minnesota relatives we often head over there for a day and it’s really an intriguing place.   In some ways it’s the capital of American retail consumerism, a dubious but interesting distinction.   In a world fraught with violence, intolerance, war, disease, and hardship isn’t it nice to have four miles of enclosed, climate-controlled store fronts, amusement park, aquarium, and theme restaurants?   No?   C’mon, you call yourself an American?

Travel Channel notes:

The Mall of America is effectively an entire enclosed city. Designed by 40 architects and designers over a period of four years.

Giant Rectangle, allowing strolling without backtracing.
Each floor has over a MILE of storefront space.

4 malls in one with different themes:
North Garden

West Market – RR station theme.
South Avenue – Southern grand hotel theme.
East Broadway – modern high tech design

Glass sphere spy cams document shopper’s every move.

120 security gaurds plus dogs to sniff out trouble.

250k visitors daily during peak times

Camp Snoopy makes 25 million per year.

20,000 parking spots in 3 square miles of parking. State, symbol, and color designations to help mall visitors find their car.

20 sit down restaurants plus 30 fast food.

14 screen movie theater.

Chapel for marriages is the “Chapel of Love”.

5 themed restaurants and Hooters is the most popular watering hole in the mall.

Underwater Adventures is a huge aquarium located in lower sections.