The Top 10 Searches that Brought Traffic to UnderScoopFire in 2012

You love Kaley Cuoco.

You really love Kaley Cuoco.

But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

I’m a big fan of what Will West did over at his site recently – in his “West Year Ever” post he gave readers a peek behind the curtain, some insight into his thoughts as a blogger and a member of the online geek community. I thought I’d take a look at something that fascinates me and share it with you: online searches.

OK, so back to Cuoco- maybe you don’t love her or conduct daily web searches for her, but your fellow UnderScoopFire visitors certainly do.

Actually, a more accurate statement might be something like: “Google really loves us when people search for Kaley Cuoco.” Traffic spiked after Conan showed this image of Cuoco (NSFW-ish) to embarrass her while she was on his show this week.

Even pre-Conan, searches relating to the Big Bang Theory star have accounted for 650% more traffic to our site in 2012 than the second place search term. That’s a huge gap. The next biggest gap between two searches in the top ten is 12%.

Since the launch of this site just over a year ago, here are the top 10 search terms that bring traffic our way:

1. Kaley Cuoco

We inducted Kaley into the Wife Pretty Hall of Fame in the summer of 2011. She was one of the first inductees, just after Julie Bowen & Kate Beckinsale. We heaped high praise on Kaley, and according to the traffic, it was justified.

2. Christmas Vacation

In 2011 we did an entire podcast episode about the Griswold family Christmas. The response was strong, and it even inspired our friend Brian at Cool & Collected to write a song about it! We posted a few more Christmas Vacation-related things this year, and surely there will be more next Christmas.

3. Superhero symbols

One day I was marveling at the simple elegance of Deadpool’s logo. I wondered where it would rank amongst the other comic book superhero logos out there. I couldn’t find any definitive lists ranking them, so decided to take a crack at it. It’s always the posts you put the least thought and effort into that get the big results.

4. Stana Katic

We sometimes ask for readers to submit nominees for the upcoming month’s Wife Pretty Hall of Fame induction. When contributor Jason Gross nominated Stana Katic last spring, I asked if he would mind doing a brief write-up about her, since non-Castle fans might not be aware of her. He did, and it has been raking in the views ever since.

5. What happened to Bridget Fonda

Yep. Not ‘Bridget Fonda‘ or ‘that girl from Single White Female‘, but ‘what happened to Bridget Fonda‘. I’m sure glad Mr.Serious did a Where Are They Now post about her, so we could help answer that very query for 14,000+ people this year.

6. Minka Kelly

This is an easy one. It didn’t hurt that we re-posted some of the hottest images of Wife Pretty Hall of Famer Minka Kelly. We even found a way to shoehorn her into the 1980s JC Penney Catalog toy section post.

7. Sarlacc Pit

Surely visitors are confused when they arrive and find an interview with Sarlacc Pitt (Brad’s brother), but hopefully they can find the humor in it. I mean, we did break some exclusives on his 80s roommate, why he never did porn, and why George Lucas named it the “Pit of Carkoon”.

8. TMNT

Yes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! A topic that we set out to cover from the very birth of the idea for this site. The focus of UnderScoopFire from the first post & podcast episode #1 was to spark discussion about the beloved toy & cartoon properties that we children of the 80s grew up on. There was a heavy G.I.Joe and M.A.S.K. presence early on, and while we have devoted some (not enough) time to Masters of the Universe, Thundercats and Silverhawks, we’ve completely snubbed the Transformers so far. We plan to change that in 2013.

I have to take a moment to thank Jaime Hood of shezcrafti for creating this unbelievable TMNT infographic for us to celebrate the premiere of Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last fall. I was extremely proud to feature it here and it deserves all the views it gets.

9. Call Me Maybe meme

This one is kinda embarrassing.

So, one day I stumbled upon an image of Darth Vader doing the whole “I just met you, I’m you father, so join me maybe” thing and was amused. That led me to this guy, and then this one, and then I just plucked ten of them and made a list. What can I say, it gets hits. We’re not Reader’s Digest.

10. Kool Aid Man

This one has me baffled. Although he’s a great candidate for a fake “Where Are They Now” piece, we (regrettably) have yet to do a Kool-Aid Man expose. The only place he appears on this site is as one of 20 People Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is Definitely Not About (along with people like Dave Coulier & the male cast of Friends). Maybe we should start pumping out more Kool-Aid Man content.

Not surprisingly, the most commented on post is the G.I. Joe Codename Generator. In the post we ask for people to leave their freshly-generated Joe & Cobra codenames in the comments. Many were left on Facebook & Twitter as well!

Thanks again for a great first full year of blogging, podcasting, and most importantly networking with a bunch of great people. I’ve had a lot of fun, and plan to continue through 2013. #kaleycuoco #SEO #shameless