I covered most of my near year-end statistical data on Christmas Day, when I said a lot of my visitors in 2007 were not only coming from Google, but looking for information on Google. But there are still a few pebbles left to be uncovered. As I quickly looked at the year's statistics - through 5 p.m. today, a unique referral caught my eye.Almost 1 percent of my visitors in 2007 came from Robert Scoble's link blog. In aggregate, after each of the Google properties, MySpace, BlogLines, and Feedburner, Scoble's link blog sent about 5,000 visitors in 2007, in little dribs and drabs, usually about one to two dozen visitors per item he chose to share in Google Reader. In all, there were 51 posts I made in 2007 that he shared, which delivered 10 or more unique visitors.
While the URL strings from Google Reader aren't pretty, they still work, as you can see in the quick screen grab above from my report from Analog.
It's always interesting to me to learn how we first find out about people, and find their blogs.
The way I first found Robert's blog? The infamous "Brrreeeport" experiment from early 2006.
As this blog was getting off the ground, I was peeking at Technorati, and this nonsensical word caught my eye as a common search term. After finding Robert's blog, it was off to the races for me. Clicking off to GigaOM and TechCrunch and eventually on to folks my own level was a serious rush, and I was dumbfounded I hadn't found it before. Somehow, I'd been so siloed as to not have the light bulb go on until early 2006.
You can see my first mentioning of this here in March 2006: Top Ten Sites for NextGen Tech Info
Others have told me they found my blog either through one of Scoble's posts, or from the link blog. I know it works. While I doubt I have the power to deliver people 1% of their yearly traffic from my link blog, that's one major reason I keep mine going. I want new people to learn what I'm reading, and find new sources for information. I read Scoble's Link Blog, and often open the links in a new window, and eventually find myself subscribing to their RSS feed in Google Reader. That's one of the major tenets of the new Web - sharing, following, and discovering.
So Robert, thanks for the 1%. And if you were one of the 1%, thanks for visiting. I hope you'll stay.
To subscribe to my link blog, start here.