When I got up yesterday morning, I looked at my stats, and the page views for the day had shot up to more than 16,000 overnight. That cinched it. I was ready to contact Blogger and tell them my account was fried...till I looked at Google. It turned out that Google was celebrating the 113th anniversary of Calder's birth on July 22, 1898, by having a mobile in the well-known "Google Doodle" spot. When I clicked to read more about the artist, I found that my post was on Google's first page. That explained it. By 7:00 p.m., when the counter rolled over, my hits for the day had reached 17,955. Crazy! I'm still shaking my head in disbelief. I never knew the Google Doodle had that kind of impact on web searches. (The Calder Doodle is gone, and today is back to normal, incidentally.)
But thank you, Google, for driving so much new traffic my way yesterday... and thank you, Alexander Calder.
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| Google Doodle, July 22, 2011 searchenginewatch.com |
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| Calder in his Paris studio, 14 Rue de la Colonie, fall 1931. Photograph by Marc Vaux calder.org |
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| Sumac II, 1952 calder.org |
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| The Y, 1960 calder.org |
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| o2u1.com |
i noticed that it took me to ur page :)..i knew atleast five of my friends told me that the search about calder brought them to your blog..and all of them are not blog readers and careless about design etc..i like google's gesture in changing their logo to suit the occasion ...cool isnt it..creating awareness!
ReplyDelete@Sudha: It was surreal. I was sure it was some sort of tech problem till I made the Google connection. I usually get around 1000 hits a day, give or take a little, so that completely took me by surprise.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the hits! I think I did a Calder post or two long ago, but the hit counter I installed a while back seemed to stop working or something. No biggie.
ReplyDeleteI grew up loving mobiles, so Calder was someone I always admired. While I could never afford, nor would I want to invest in a real Calder, I have plans to make some of similar style. :)
@1950sarh: The Curbly book on mid-century DIY projects has instructions for creating a really cool Calder-style mobile.
ReplyDeletethat's so cool! did you know that OCMA (orange county museum of art) has a calder exhibit going right now? i haven't seen it yet, but can't wait!
ReplyDeleteIt's such a rewarding feeling when serendipity brings loads of new fans to you. Hope a lot of them return.
ReplyDelete@Carey Brown Strombotne, I'm going to have to check that out ASAP.
@Nick Klaus: I admit that it was a rush to get that many hits, but I knew it was a one-shot thing. What's even more rewarding is having readers like you who keep coming back and commenting.
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