For quite a while everyone in my office has known about the positive impact celebrity news and red carpet events have jewelry related search traffic. Jeweler stores who blog about celebrities can attract many organic visitors. The conversion process is a different topic, but celebrity blogging certainly does give you more opportunities with customers to convert.
Most of the time I talk about celebrity blogging in the past tense, but there's a far greater potential for a sudden influx of visitors if you blog about celebrity events the same day a story breaks.
Specifically... celebrity engagements.
I first became aware of this phenomenon on November 16, 2010 when Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement and there was a huge spike in the amount of search traffic for the phrase "engagement ring."
Normally the amount of search traffic for the plural phrase "engagement rings" far surpasses the singular version, but on that day, according to Google Insights, that was the first day ever that I found when the singular phrase was greater than the plural.
In fact, search traffic for "engagement ring" was 60% greater than "engagement rings" that day.
While researching the singular and plural search phrases for yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I noticed an enormous appearance for the term "engagement ring" on May 24, 2011. A close review revealed a back-to-back announcement of reality TV stars Emily Maynard returning her ring and Kim Kardashian getting engaged.
Trending charts provided by Google Insights show many hills and valleys. But the peeks on November 16, 2011 and May 24, 2011 made me wonder if every other small blip in the "engagement ring" chart had celebrity significance.
To my surprise, they all did. There are 20 significant blips on the "engagement ring" Google Insights trend chart for the date range January 2004 through July 2012.
Here's the dates and their significance:
July 4, 2004 - Britney Spears reportedly paid for her 5-carat ring
July 14, 2004 - Britney Spears and Kevin Federline appeared at the Ritz-Carlton
February 11, 2005 - Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman engagement
June 17, 2005 - Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise (first really big blip)
November 16, 2010 - Prince William and Kate Middleton
January 10, 2011 - Natalie Portman shows off engagement ring
January 21, 2011 - Jesse James and Kat Von D engagement
May 24, 2011 - US Weekly breaks news that Emily Maynard returned her ring to TV "Bachelor's" Brad Womack
May 25, 2011 - Announcement that Kim Kardashian's 20.5ct ring is worth $2 million dollars.
August 2, 2011 - J.P. Rosenbaum and 'Bachelorette' Ashley Hebert's Engagement
August 15, 2011 - Tara Reid tweets a photo of her canary engagement ring.
August 17, 2011 - Closeup photo of Kim Kardashian's ring becomes available
August 18, 2011 - Huffington Post publishes an interesting articles about taking your engagement ring off during a job interview.
December 16, 2011 - Britney Spears shows off the engagement ring given by Jason Trawick
December 27, 2011 - Announcement that Matthew McConaughey is engaged.
April 13, 2012 - Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit get engaged
April 16, 2012 - Photo of Angelina Jolie's ring becomes available
May 8, 2012 - Jessica Biel is seen with her engagement ring given by Justin Timberlake
May 13, 2012 - Lady Gaga wearing a diamond ring on her ring finger, launching speculation she is engaged (still unconfirmed)
June 6, 2012 - Miley Cyrus announces engagement to Liam Hemsworth
Each of the dates above was flooded with news and gossip blogs, many which had the same information written from each author's point of view. Many of these reports bled into the days and weeks after as more details on the engagement, the ring, the couple's likelihood to last, and other celebrity commentary rolled in. Human interaction also affects those searches; it may have been announced on one day, but it was not until a group meeting in the salon did perhaps three people do a search on the phrase a day later.
When people suddenly start searching for the same phrase, Google activates a little known search feature called "Query Deserves Freshness" or QDF. The QDF feature triggers Google search to return the most recently found results on the topic, rather than websites that have achieved good SEO placement.
Even though searches may bleed into the days or weeks after the initial announcement, QDF is usually only a factor during huge search surges on the initial day.
If you can stay on top of these celebrity events, you too can take advantage of the QDF of celebrity engagements. In tomorrow's Daily Golden Nugget I'll explain exactly how to do this.
