• Working out how to feed my hungry market, while still feeding my herd! #
• @webword — thanks, from Melbourne downunder! #

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Sunday, 7:44pm: on another blog of mine, I wrote about the file extension “mgmf” in an article titled “What Kind Of File Is That?” — as .mgmf files were something I hadn’t come across before (they’re a file used in the mind mapping software MindGenius).

Monday, 8:48pm: a user in the UK, searching for “mgmf file” visits my site to see this article.

Twenty five hours and four minutes after it was posted, traffic was already arriving.

As I have stats software, I was able to look on the Google UK site to see where my site was in the results.

A PDF file was number one and I was number two — so in effect, I was the number one website on UK Google within just one day.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t use this blog to “monetise” my traffic — although this result here shows how Google treats fresh information in a blog, and how it can provide you with traffic literally a day later.

I even ranked ABOVE the site of the manufacturer of the software, other than for a single PDF document on their site.

Worth keeping in mind as part of your online traffic strategy!

Here’s the screenshot I took so you can see the top of the results:

UPDATE

Within another 8 hours, we were number one in the results on US Google for “mgmf file extension”… and had traffic that way too!

UPDATE 2

It’s happened AGAIN. On 29th August, I posted an entry about the TinyURL service — and had a visitor to the site on 1st September, typing in “tinyurl get destination” go Google in the US — I was number one in the results on US Google out of 156,000 results.

Ranked below me on the page are much more well-known sites such as 37Signals, New York Times (blog), Perl.org, Podcast Directory and Spamcop.net.

There’s a story in today’s Age about Melbourne’s worrying water storage levels. However, the opening “claim” is little more than low-level sensationalism.

It starts off with these words:

MELBOURNE’S water storages are now 151 billion litres — or almost 10 per cent below where they were at the end of last winter, and householders should prepare for even tougher restrictions this summer.

While that’s true — it doesn’t reveal the whole story. Yes, the water issue remains as strong as ever. But making the claim above in the opening paragraph would have you believe we’ve been doing nothing as a community to save water, nor does it recognise this year’s good rains until much later in the article. You have to get to page two of the online article to find this:

Melbourne’s water storages had recorded levels either around or above their respective 30-year average winter totals already, (Melbourne Water spokesman Ben Pratt) said.

Melbourne’s water storages, at the start of 2007, were about 20 per cent below the January 2006 recordings. And they remained that way until mid-June, when our storages have picked up quite a bit. So — as of late August 2007 we are “almost 10 per cent below” — this means in fact we’ve closed the gap on 2006 levels by more than half.

(Compare the last 10 years of data on this Melbourne water storage graph page).

In other words, Melbourne’s rainfall and water usage patterns have resulted in us being at a better position than we would have been, had the 2006 trend continued after mid-June. In that case, our storage levels would presently be in the high 20 per cent range (around 28 per cent, not 38.5 per cent as they are as of 26 August 2007).

Of course, this doesn’t reveal the whole story either, as it’s only comparing the last two years of data. But it does reveal that this year’s trend is better than is being reported in this story in The Age.

• Looking at auto dialer software… a couple of good options… especially like knowing it can distinguish answ machine and live person #
• I wonder how autodialer goes with mobile voicemail or an answered for you service. Be good to use for Brunswick Rotary meeting reminders! #
• Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/28em9v #
• Currently Browsing: http://tinyurl.com/28em9v Donald Trump on MySpace! #

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