Yesterday morning, I noticed some strange things going on with TruePravda’s Sitemeter statistics. I was getting around the same number of visitors per hour yesterday as I did in a full day. All told 770 dropped by yesterday, which is a quite a jump from the average 45-50 visitors per day that TruePravda gets.
What was going on? Increases in website traffic like this only occur when someone gets “Instalaunched,” a term describing the phenomenon that occurs when uber blogger Glenn Reynolds links to a website. I checked Instapundit. Nope, no link there, but I did notice one post that intrigued me, dealing with the most popular search term on the internet right now.
It seems that the terms Nick + Berg + beheading + tape were among the most searched for on the web. I downloaded my server access logs and sure enough, many visitors were coming through Yahoo or MSN. Sure enough, a Yahoo search had my site as number 17 for the terms, since I had written on the media and Berg’s death here. I had also written about my failure to tape a TV show here.
Those terms, along with the frenzy to see the Nick Berg beheading tape, catapulted TruePravda’s traffic into high gear. While I’m pleased to have the traffic, I wish it were under better circumstances than those looking for a tape of Nick Berg’s beheading. I made the mistake of watching the Daniel Pearl video a couple of years ago and immediately wished I hadn’t. Viewing such horrific acts only brings attention to the terrorists and their false god, and humiliation to the victim. These murderous cowards don’t deserve the honor of anyone watching their “work.”