Is This Some Kind of Long Tail Effect at Ezinearticles or is the Market changing?

[badfun]

warriors,
I was doing some research for a new campaign with EZABullDozer and noticed an interesting difference between the most viewed articles of August, and the most viewed articles of the year so far. Take a look; here are the top ten most viewed articles so far, for August 2009:

1. How Start a Profitable Business and Make Money From Affiliate Marketing
views: 13143
2. Best Forex Software to Achieve Consistency Within the Forex Market
views10792
3. 4 Crucial Tips You Should Know to Get Your Ex Back in 7 Days Or Less
views10047
4. Do Get Rich Quick Schemes Really Work?
views: 8470
5. Best Ways to Make Money Online - Finding Realistic Paths to a Steady Income
views:8469
6. Erase Your Credit Card Debt - Eliminate Up to 50% of Your Debt Legally
views:5879
7. The Easiest Ways to Make Money From Home
views:5196
8. The Best Ways to Start a Business With Little Or No Start-Up Capital
views:4850
9. Best Way to Build Your Wealth Fast
views:4717
10. Best Ways to Make Serious Money Starting With a Small Investment
views:4709


Notice that 9 out of 10 of the articles are about making money.

Compare that with the top 10 most viewed articles of the year so far:

1. Acai Berry - How I Lost 30 Pounds in Under 30 Days Using The Acaia Berry
views:190361
2. Top 5 Sexual Positions to Make Her Wildly Orgasm
views:85279
3. How to Lose 10 Pounds in a Week - 8 Proven Tips That Helped Me to Lose 10 Pounds in One Week
views:71495
4. Sexual Intercourse Positions to Get Pregnant With a Boy Baby
views:65881
5. How to Add 3 Inches to Your Penis Size Using a Surprisingly Simple Method
views:61479
6. Name From Phone Number Databases - A Popular Solution to Mystery Phone Calls
views:60946
7. Bollywood Movie Releases of 2009, Hindi Films of 2009
views:59102
8. 10 Hot Text Messages to Send Your Boyfriend
views:56186
9. Acai Berry Alternative - Can This Health Supplement Really Top the Acai Berry
views:53479
10. 7 Questions to Ask a Girl on a First Date
views:51703

Weight loss and sex top that list.

That piqued my interest, so I started checking the stats for each month, to see which article end up being most viewed over time. Sure enough, weight loss, sex, penis size....the usual suspects.


Making money articles get buried by these other topics over time. Is this a kind of long-tail effect? Making money articles get an initial rush but then interest falls off. Or are people suddenly very interested in making money?

Hmmm...more research beckons. What do you guys think?
brent

[Joe118]

So it seems you're saying that penis enlargement articles have a bit more staying power?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[ExRat]

Hi badfun,

Making money articles get buried by these other topics over time. Is this a kind of long-tail effect? Making money articles get an initial rush but then interest falls off. Or are people suddenly very interested in making money?

IMers have just started implementing the same 'view manipulation' techniques that they've picked up off the other groups.

[LIndaB]

I would suspect that the state of the economy has something to do with this. It's been getting noticeably worse the last couple of months. So I would expect more people to be searching for ways to make money.

[MSGeek]

I agree, we have a chance of much more interest to IM topics in the future considering where economy goes in the future.

[CliveG]

I have not been to the USA for a couple of years but in the UK and more so in parts of Europe, particularly France, the recession is now (reductions in interest rates have delayed many of the problems) beginning to hit some of "the men in the street" quite hard. Perhaps they are turning to the internet to solve their money problems as well as their other problems.

[badfun]

Originally Posted by ExRat

Hi badfun,


IMers have just started implementing the same 'view manipulation' techniques that they've picked up off the other groups.

I'm not quite sure what this means; care to elaborate?
brent

[Shannon Herod]

Originally Posted by badfun

I'm not quite sure what this means; care to elaborate?
brent

It means people drive junk traffic to push the view count up on the article, so the article can be in the most viewed category and get more human views

[SpankD]

Hmmmmmm
A friend of mine said "It's all about Oral sex, God and money" on the internet. Seems to be in that order too.

Note Op said long tail effect in a thread with the words penis enhancement. LOL

[badfun]

Originally Posted by Shannon Herod

It means people drive junk traffic to push the view count up on the article, so the article can be in the most viewed category and get more human views

I understand. I've often wondered how much of the traffic on ezinearticles is just marketers checking up on the competition and their own articles. I'm sure it is pretty high. And 'view manipulation' as you say.

Still, you can get a sense of certain trends and you can certainly zero in on succesful articles and figure out how they did it.
brent

[Matthew Olson]

Originally Posted by ExRat

Hi badfun,


IMers have just started implementing the same 'view manipulation' techniques that they've picked up off the other groups.

Yep, this probably accounts for a lot of what you are seeing. In many of these cases the views have little to do with genuine public viewing interest.

[badfun]

I just checked the top ten most viewed sites for August again, a couple of weeks after I posted this thread, and sure enough, a new trend is emerging. Here are the first five:

1.How to Get a Bigger Penis Without Spending a Dime
views: 25227

2.How Start a Profitable Business and Make Money From Affiliate Marketing
views: 13377

3.4 Crucial Tips You Should Know to Get Your Ex Back in 7 Days Or Less
views: 12777

4.The Benefits of the RegCure Software Product
views: 9819

5.Best Ways to Make Money Online - Finding Realistic Paths to a Steady Income
views: 9745

The top article from two weeks ago has been knocked out of first position into second by a wide margin to a penis enlargement article. I am surprised to see that there are no weight-loss articles in there yet.

My theory is that 'make money online' articles get a lot of initial traffic, much of it from marketers themselves, but then slowly get buried by the articles that people really want to read.

So yes Joe, penis articles do have more "staying power" ;-)
brent

[LegitBlogger]

Ha ha ha LOL about bigger penis articles. I have also noticed
my "sex" related articles getting a HUGE ton of views, even
without any "extra" backlinking or manipulations. So, it's
funny what people "read" and "DO" when no one is looking,

[KRA-12]

Originally Posted by Shannon Herod

It means people drive junk traffic to push the view count up on the article, so the article can be in the most viewed category and get more human views

Interesting observation. Do you have any Idea when this trend started? How long has this been going on?

Thanks

[badfun]

Originally Posted by KRA-12

Interesting observation. Do you have any Idea when this trend started? How long has this been going on?

Thanks

I don't know about it; I'm not even sure how you would drive 'junk' traffic but I assume there is some technique out there. It must be of limited use really. Getting into 'most viewed' category does increase your backlinks hugely, BUT, they are all internally linked, so that doesn't count for much in seo.

still, I suppose more people would see the articles because of the more obvious placement.
brent

[Tony Dean]

Right!

I'm off to write a load of sex articles for my IM products!

[Traffic-Bug]

People use the internet to find topics that they either dont know about and dont know whom to ask or are afraid or shy to ask. That may be the reason why penis enlargement finds a place in the top viewed articles list.

[J smith]

IMO, it's because it's easier to push the other articles to the top of search engines (weight loss, sex etc) then it is to get a make money online article to the first page. Or at least I would think that's why this happens.

make money articles might get an initial boost (newness for google ranking) but once they drop off it's very hard to compete with the more established mmo/work from home sites. As such you can get an initial spash, but after that it's mostly gone.

Where as with say acai (the how I lost 30 pounds in 30 days article is on the first page of half the acai berry terms) it's likely easier to push it to the first page and obviously once there it will start getting all the traffic from se's getting even more views.

[Joshua.E1]

It all depends on the trend, that people will search online. Isn't Internet great? You can find out what the mass people are looking for in this current time.

Predicating trend is always an ongoing work and research. This is where the money can be made.