Back in September of this year I wrote that Search Engines are NOT as Important As Many Believe They Are Because Search Engines are no one’s target audience: people are! My prediction for 2009 is that search engines will continue to decline in importance as more Internet users ask their Social Networks for recommendations and learn how to access online reviews and Local Search Directories.
I was just about to dig back into Google Analytics when I saw that Derek had posted his Top Ten Referring Blogs. While his blog is older and more established than this one, many will be surprised to see GrowMap coming in as the blog that sent the fourth highest amount of traffic to DerekSemmler.com.
His top referring blog is Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets to Creating a High-Profile, High-Traffic and High-Profit Blog. Although this is another new blog it is dedicated to the book of the same name. I would love to see their analytics as I suspect they were able to drive so much traffic because so many bloggers and Social Media users shared it far and wide.
A bigger surprise to more will be that both FriendFeed and Twitter send more traffic to this blog than Google (showing up at third and fourth). Directly typing in the URL was first; the URL in emails I send was fifth followed by TwiTip.com, Louis Gray, StumbleUpon and TucsonSeoSolutions. The Yahoo search engine came in a distant eleventh.
Tip for all bloggers: comments left in blogs can be a significant source of traffic, especially when a particular post becomes popular at one or more Social Networking sites. The blog doesn’t have to already have major traffic or be well known as Social Networking sites can send hundreds to tens of thousands of visitors to any page that gets widely shared.
