OK, perhaps you’re intrigued by the title. You wonder if I’m making thermometers now?
Nope.
This is a story about media in our society.
Yesterday, this blog’s traffic blew up. The number one search used to find MowryJournal.com: “Wall Mount Surfer Thermometer.” And, as you probably know, that has nothing to do with what I do. At all.
I make things that do wall mount. And, I make things shaped like surfboards. But surfers? Thermometers?
Nope.
However, somehow, someway, some of my photography made it into Google Images yesterday … when you search for “Wall Mount Surfer Thermometer,” you see several of my Magic Bottle Openers fairly quickly. This is the most popular image that I shot:
Magic Bottle Opener 16 – 027. Cherry, Black Walnut, Hard Maple, Yellowheart & Goncalo Alves.
The weird part (as if this isn’t odd enough) is that the most popular image in yesterday’s blog wasn’t a Magic Bottle Opener as seen in the most popular search … it was a cheese board:
Cheese Board 15 – 058. Hard Maple, Yellowheart & Cherry. 8″ x 11″ x 3/4″.
And, for the record, this isn’t my prettiest effort.
Why did traffic for that image blow up yesterday? No idea. The only search that garnered significant views yesterday was “Wall Mount Surfer Thermometer,” and that search didn’t yield any images for cheese boards from any maker, including me.
So how did an image of a cheese board have huge, unprecedented traffic, when the only search delivering an unusual number of people to the site was “Wall Street Surfer Thermometer?” No clue.
In our society today, much of our information gathering is driven by online search. Advertising in this “medium” has absolutely exploded … ending the virtual monopoly that Yellow Pages had on “searching for information” just a few years ago. Today, I don’t even keep the Yellow Pages when somebody places them on my front step. They go straight to recycling.
Revenues from search has made Google into the $75 billion corporation that it is today. And with all of that success … they still point information seekers here when all they want is to know how hot it is, surfer style.
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