A Traffic Surprise

I am not sure how I feel about surprises.  Usually if someone says they have a surprise for you, it is good.  Otherwise they say they have bad news or ask you to sit down first.  In keeping with that tradition, my traffic surprise is a good one.  At least as far as my online writing goes, the only surprises that can occur when it comes to traffic are good ones!

At HubPages, there are little red arrows next to your articles in the stats section that mean your traffic is going up.  Two little arrows mean that it is going way up.  Well, I have two articles there today which had two little arrows by them.  I was totally shocked and wanted to figure out where all the traffic was coming from.  I went to the articles and clicked on the stats section that reveals details about that particular article.  (I think it is wonderful to have this information available at the click of a mouse courtesy of HubPages.)

The first one that I looked at had essentially doubled its views over the past 24 hours.  It turns out that someone had posted a link at Reddit.com so a lot of the additional traffic had come from that site.  The article is about Lasik surgery and getting a free TV.  Obviously, someone found that somewhat interesting.  Here is the link to the actual article:

Have Lasik Eye Surgery and Get a Free TV!

The other one has been published for quite some time (since July 2009) and was something I wrote as part of the weekly HubNugget topics.  I hadn't noticed but 20% of the views have come in the last 30 days with a significant portion in the last 24 hours.  Mind you significant to me means double digits.  Nonetheless, I went to the stats page and noticed that the traffic was coming from Google.  There is also a tab that allows you to see the search terms that are leading to the article.  I did this and found that people were searching the phrase "golf as a hobby".  I did this myself and found that I was in the first position.  How exciting!

Needless to say, I am pretty pumped and hoping that the mini-spike in traffic will persist.  I am hoping to get another article written today.  I already made a few links and just plan to keep working since you never really know what can happen when you have content out on the internet.  Here's to many pleasant surprises to all who read this blog!