PaulShort.com

Susan Boyle Lost Britain’s Got Talent – No, She Didn’t

Paul — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:05:59 +0000

So the season finale of Britain’s got Talent is over and pretty well every blog and news site on the internet is reverberating the same headline: “Susan Boyle Lost…” For heavens sake, No, she didn’t lose. She placed a very admirable second place behind the Diversity dance troupe.

But no one is really talking about Diversity. When I was researching my Inquisitr post earlier about BGT, I actually had a hard time finding any information about the first place winner. By the way, I wrote a much more accurate headline than 95% of the other sites covering the story, because I actually conveyed who the winner is and who came second. Not only that, the bulk of the body of the post was about the winner:

“Britain’s Got Talent Winner 2009: Dance Troupe Diversity, Susan Boyle 2nd“

Yes, Susan Boyle has been the hot topic for the last 3 months or so, but I think it’s only appropriate to give credit where credit is due, rather than ignore the winner in favor of the Boyle name dropping traffic.

Plus, it seems to be a trend with the reality talent shows lately, considering the American Idol upset where Adam Lambert lost…

This Fake Cheque Really Makes Me Want To Give You My Money

Paul — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:20:13 +0000

I’ve been seeing a lot of these ad units on sites lately. It’s obviously an ad for some method of how to get money from the government of whatever country you live in, but take a look at the part of the cheque I magnified for you. It’s a cheque dated for April 2002 and the amount on it is for $2.48.

Huh? But the blue headline above it says “I got a cheque for $11,668 from the Canadian Government.” I mean, come on, if you’re going to use a fake cheque in your marketing material, at least make an effort to photoshop in the right amounts and dates.

Big Changes In Alexa Traffic Rank

Paul — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:00:57 +0000

Alexa recently made some big changes to their site and services offered. Now, there’s an obvious change in how the service calculates it’s traffic rank as well.

While surfing around earlier, I happened to check the Alexa traffic rank for a site I was viewing and was surprised at how much it’s numbers had dropped. I was so surprised in fact that I decided to check the traffic rank for a handful of other sites I visit on a daily basis and here’s what I found:

Lynn Terry’s Clicknewz.com, which had a 3 month Alexa rank of roughly 75,000 just days ago, has dropped down to just above 45,000. Twitter.com has dropped from roughly 250 down to 96. The Inquisitr has went from roughly 16,000 to just below 13,000 and the Warrior Forum has dropped from about 12,000 to about 1,300. (All numbers approximate at time of publishing)

Obviously, something in the way Alexa ranks sites has changed. If one were to take the numbers literally, you could say the sites listed above recieved massive traffic spikes over the past 3 months, but for anyone who follows Alexa traffic data, those drastic changes from one day to the next only mean one thing: Alexa rank is just as unreliable now as it’s always been.