Watching a Trend Develop and Decay
Blog: 11 May 2020: Trends: Jumping on the Bandwagon
Over the previous few days I’d seen there was a noticeable uptick in number of views at Adlers Writing, see graph:
Saturday evening (9th May) was more than double the average, and previous few days were up. Why? Views for the latest new story were flat.
I went through the stats of the most viewed stories and quickly found the one that had the extra views. As views were all external, it looked like Google had served the extra viewers via a similar search to this:
The above search on “microfiction” shows that the viewed story appears near the top.
I read the story, Microfiction Tips: Microfiction Defined and it’s short basic stuff. Then I had a brainwave: if a lot of people are finding out about microfiction perhaps they might want to read some stories? So I added links to a couple of good free-read stories at the end.
Sure enough within half an hour the stats of the two microfiction stories were up by the same number as the “define” story! I had managed to spot the bandwagon and jump on thereby getting extra views/reads for couple of stories.
But it was short lived. The very next day the number of views went down and two days later they were back to normal.
What Was Going On
After some research on Google I found out about the
NYC 100-word Microfiction Challenge on May 9th.
This is the first round of a Challenge to write a 100-word microfiction in 24 hours. Some 7,600 competitors battled it out against each other, in different groups. Many competitors were finding out about microfiction in the days before. Some were even panicking as the deadline approached by searching and reading everything they could find on microfiction!
So, I was lucky enough to spot the trend, watch it develop and decay and even take advantage, if only briefly.
There are two more rounds to this Challenge (Jun 26/27 & July 24/25) so I will be having a think to see if I can take better advantage next time, though there will be far fewer competitors. They will also be better as many will have been knocked out.
A Note on Google Search
Google search is a black box. No one outside Google knows the algorithm that turns a search into a set of results. As far as most users are concerned, it’s witchcraft.
Or is it?
Google search has one simple idea behind “search” and the ranking of results.
The concept of relevance.
When you search on “dogs” why is dogfish listed below dogs in that list?
Because “dog” results are more relevant than fish. Google search works on the simple concept of relevance. The more relevant a story is, the higher the ranking.
Phrasing text in stories, and other techniques, to make it more relevant is an art, is the magic, and what it’s all about.
Summary
I am lucky in that I have a couple of stories that are ranked on the first page of a Google search and get regular views and reads for these stories. (only about 20% of search results not on the first page are ever read, so are usually ignored).
Since there should be a 100-word Microfiction from every competitor in the Challenge means an extra 7,600 stories were written, so, expect more Microfiction on Medium soon.
Time to think about Google search and how we can get more reads/readers for microfiction stories.
‘till next time,
Stevie
