Googling for relevance
- March 28, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In PBB
- 7
Once PBB is released, the Amazon rank can give us some idea of the audience we’ve found. For now I can assess interest in the book by Googling the title in quotes to see how many sites mention it. I’ve done this twice a month since November, with the following results:
Date…….Google hits
01 Nov 2006 — 7 hits
15 Nov 2006 — 24
01 Dec 2006 — 30
15 Dec 2006 — 33
01 Jan 2007 — 49
15 Jan 2007 — 125
01 Feb 2007 — 602
Well helloooo there, relevance.
There’d been no real advertising at this point, but I’d sent a preliminary announcement to 300 freethought groups in the US on January 23. Two days later I thought I’d check again:
03 Feb 2007 — 9,970 hits
Ooh, didja see that?! I’m not ashamed to say I wet myself with delight. (Okay, I am ashamed.) I’m seriously concerned about the millions of unserved secular parents out there, but I also have the usual pathetic need for the approval of my fellow monkeys:
Writers are especially prone to seek out the hoo-hoo-hoos of our fellows. I started checking Google once a week, watching the meme spread like a middle-aged gut:
10 Feb 2007 — 13,300
17 Feb 2007 — 14,600
The real excitement here is that my rash promises to the publisher (i.e. that an inestimably large and hitherto untapped audience of millions of secular parents is indeed out there, dying to be tapped) were apparently true. As for me, I’m just a servant of that readership. The Googling does nothing for me personally. I could quit anytime. Really.
Okay okay, just one more toke:
27 Mar 2007 — 24,400
Aaahhhhhh, that’s the stuff. How about you: wanna hit?