Yesterday afternoon, I tried something I hadn't tried before. I went to Technorati, searched for "Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree" and then posted a comment on the Top 5 resulting blogs that basically said, "Hey, I have a photoblog - come take a look!"

(Actually, I posted to the Top 6, since one of the Top 5 was Simple Tricks and Nonsense, where my online friend Jason Bennion did a post specifically about my page).

As of last night, the results were poor. Three of the five blogs had removed my comment altogether, probably mistaking it for comment spam (or, maybe it is comment spam? That's a philisophical discussion, I guess, although I'd argue that while self-promoting, at least the link was to a relevant topic. Plus, I'm not collecting IP addresses or selling anyone anything). But, I digress...

Anyway, this morning I checked my Google Analytics stats and found that the volume to my site had increased 100% over the average volume for the month (201 pageviews, as opposed to an average of just over 100). Seventeen of those hits came from Simple Tricks, and thirty-eight came from one of the two blogs I posted to. The other blog generated no hits at all.

Two interesting thoughts:

1) The blog that generated traffic is run by the New York Times. So while blogging is all about the little guy having a voice to compete with big media, we once again see that big media is correctly named - even a very small percentage of their much larger audience can move the needle on a small site like mine.

2) Self-promotion works. The photoblog page had been averaging around 11 pageviews per day since I started it, so only ~25 of the extra 100 views came directly from the link. Pages/Visit yesterday was 1.97, as compared to 1.60 the rest of the month - a 23% increase. This further exemplifies Scalzi's Bacon Cat Incident Effect which recognizes that when you get someone to your site for a particular reason, they often look around a while before they leave. Hopefully, a few of them come back from time to time and an audience builds.

This concludes today's random observations about the Googleverse. You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Oh, and P.S.: If you're here because you viewed the photoblog yesterday and came back to check out the blog, welcome! Please come back often and tell your friends!