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RIDING SHOTGUN DOWN THE INSTALANCHE

May 15, 2005

We experienced a second-degree "instalanche" last week. The Instapundit linked to the TaxProf's mention of our post about the New York Times selective editing of a chart on marginal rates -- so we were linked to a post linked by the great Professor Reynolds. Andrew Sullivan also linked to the TaxProf's post, giving the Tax Prof sort of an eight-run home run, as these things go.

The TaxProf and the Tax Update both use "Sitemeter" to monitor our visitors, enabling us to see how much traffic an Instapundit link generates. The Tax Prof's traffic spike is something to behold:

From around 1500 visits on Tuesday to 15,000 on Wednesday - a testament to the force of an instalanche.

How many of those vistors made the extra click to the our post? Not a large fraction:

Certainly a noticable traffic increase, and a much appreciated one. Still, it shows that the power of an Instapundit link weakens greatly after the primary link. This small sample seems to show most people read Instapundit like I do - frequently checking out the first link, but not often following through further links. Instapundit filters out a lot of blogosphere noise for folks. Here he links a post that tells the story well; sensibly, most folks have seen what they need after their visit to the TaxProf, so they return to Instapundit, or maybe to work.

CHASING MOBY LINK

So how do you move up to a "first-degree" Instapundit link? One could follow the TaxProf's lead by posting lots of smart, well-written and graphically attractive articles. But that takes talent and work.

We choose another path. We will stalk the photo that Instapundit will be compelled to link to: a protest babe unloading a lawn mower from an RX8 while wearing a Nikon D-70. Come, Queequeg...

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