The Drudge Bump
April 8th, 2008, 10:20 am · Post a Comment · posted by Scott Shackford
I have a typical pattern of “checking things” when I first arrive in the morning. I check my voice mail and e-mail of course. Then I check the web site to make sure there aren’t any pending abuse reports for comments or blogs and take a look at site participation. I was a bit surprised to check in this morning and discover several comments about today’s editorial.
The editorial, about a proposed global warming tax plan in Los Angeles, was reprinted from the Orange County Register (part of our chain of newspapers). I run editorials from them on state, national and international issues because we share a libertarian viewpoint. Normally, their editorials don’t garner much response on the site because they’re not about local issues, and of course, local reporting drives our readership and online participation.
Figuring then that another site must have referred to or linked back to us, I decided the check out our web stats. Much to my surprise, we had set a new record for page views for an entire day, even though it was only 8:30 a.m. After some investigation, I found out the Drudge Report had linked to the editorial, which was driving thousands of folks from outside Barstow to come take a look.
I certainly don’t mind the boost in page views for a day, but felt bad because the OC Register was responsible for them. I did let the editorial crew there know they had gotten a Drudge Report link, even though it was through our site.
