

How much traffic being on a Google doodle gives - nhoss2
http://stats.grok.se/en/201109/Albert_Szent-Gy%C3%B6rgyi

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jontas
I run a website that was the first result after clicking on a Google doodle.
Here is our traffic spike:

<http://i.imgur.com/HAyjo.png>

It is hard to see from that screenshot, but on an average day we get 5-20k
visitors. The day of the doodle we got 142k and sales/revenue spiked like
crazy.

~~~
maxmcd
Buckyball? Did the doodle just link to a google search of the word buckyball?

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jontas
Yep, exactly.

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qxb
As a comparison, the logo for Freddie Mercury's birthday resulted in 1.2M
Wikipedia pageviews on the day, and ~500k the day after:
<http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Freddie_Mercury>

Jorge Luis Borges? 2.0M -- but the day after (perhaps this is a time zone
thing?) <http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Jorge_Luis_Borges>

Those two were global doodles.

Goethe, who was given a doodle in Germany, received ~113k:
<http://stats.grok.se/de/201108/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe>

I don't have the time to do any more, but if anyone wants to (or can think of
a way to automate it), the list of Google Doodles is here:
<http://www.google.com/logos/index.html>

(I was assuming that Wikipedia was the first result for the person's name in
these cases. I also only counted en.wikipedia.org for the global doodles.)

EDIT: extra contextual stats from grok.se

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chrislomax
This will spark some controversy but I think if it was a wider appealing
doodle then it would get more coverage. In my ignorance I would not click it
because I do not know what it represents really.

I think the stats would have also been better a year ago, I now use the
address bar in chrome to do all my searches so I do not see the doodle in it's
full glory, I see it in the top left hand corner all small. I don't even look
at it any more!

A year ago on Firefox I would have clicked it

~~~
bradly
> In my ignorance I would not click it because I do not know what it
> represents really.

I actually only click on ones I don't recognize.

~~~
chrislomax
Well my statement is not exactly true to be fair, I think it depends how much
the doodle inspires me to click it, an orange didn't inspire me today and I
didn't recognise the name

I generally read about the doodle on Mashable before I actually click on the
doodle itself

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cvander
This remind me about SEO and Spain. Several spanish SEOs thought about this
and started building landing pages to target future doodles. And this
eventually killed links to search results in doodles in google.es ;) I'm not
sure if the limit still aplies after Panda and if other country specific
googles have the same regulations.

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aw3c2
How much traffic being on a Google doodle gives ___to a page that is the first
result on the result page that appears if a user clicks on the doodle logo_
__. I would not have clicked through to any result.

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NathanKP
When Google featured Alexander Calder in their logo a page from my blog
happened to be the 10th result on the first page of results for the term
Alexander Calder.

I got over 6000 visits that day. Keep in mind that this was 6000 clicks on the
10th result on the search page. So I believe that the hits for the first two
or three results must have been much exponentially higher.

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amikula
Very interesting.

Also interesting is that the blurb on the search result page was truncated
before the important information I was looking for could be revealed. I
wouldn't have clicked through to the Wikipedia page if the excerpt had ended a
few words after "He is credited with discovering ..."

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joelhaasnoot
That's all? Would have expected much more. Or is was this a "Sweden-only"
doodle?

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joelhaasnoot
Ah, face palm: it's currently on the Google Homepage and the US hasn't really
woken up yet...

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wgx
But the UK's been awake all day (it's 3:12pm) - so very surprising that it's
only generated 180k visits.

Maybe most people simply don't click the Google Doodle?

Seems strange.

~~~
ErrantX
Yes, there will be many more hits for the next days stats.

Random example: <http://stats.grok.se/en/201108/Pierre_de_Fermat>

That doodle was from Aug 17 2011 - 2.3M hits

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pablorenato
what a scary coincidence!! jusst TODAY i was asking myself how much traffic
google doodles give. then i see this post!!

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switch
Genuine Question - Why is this topic of any interest at all for Hacker News?

This seems more like something SEO marketers or people with nothing to do
would be interested in.

Q1 Does knowing the amount of traffic a Google Doodle gets in any way help
someone become a better hacker?

Q2 Does this topic in any way lead to getting better at anything?

Or has Hacker News turned into some tech version of LOLCatz?

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kristianp
It's related to the topic that is important to website creators, how to get
viewers on our websites.

~~~
switch
You have a point there. That someone could possibly anticipate what Doodles
are going to be used and SEO map their site to that.

It still isn't the kind of thing I personally am hoping to get at Hacker News.

It seems to me that more and more people are interested in shortcuts to
success and praying to the Tech Religions than actually doing something
themselves or sharing stuff that is really worthwhile.

