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Allison Stokke?

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Allison Stokke
Allison Stokke, athlete, college student,
technology consulting maven

I've been blogging over four years. In that time I've written hundreds of articles about technology, technology management, humor, agile, aviation, hiking -- whatever struck my fancy. So of course, when I review my server logs for the past month, one of the main reasons people come to my blog is Allison Stokke.

"Who is Allison Stokke?" you might ask. It's the same question I had last night as I poured over my server logs. You see, I am learning a bit more about web analytics and Search Engine Optimization and I'm using this blog as sort of a guinea pig.

Allison Stokke is a very attractive young lady who does track and field sports. So what the heck does track and field, or attractive young ladies, have to do with technology, agile, management, startups, or any of that?

A while back I blogged on what I thought people wanted to see. In what seemed like an idiotic use of money, studies had shown that monkeys, when given the choice, would gladly pay some of their food to look at -- monkey butts.


I found this to be interesting, so I blogged on it and put in some pictures -- funny pictures, pictures of attractive women. I even made the point that hey, this page will generate views for a long time. I used Allison as an example of this phenomenon as it applied to the internet. Poor Allison -- she became this one-hit wonder simply for having her picture snapped at a track meet.

Boy was I right! The stats tell the story.

Allison Stokke
Although she won several medals, an injury put her out of
commission for a while back in 2006


As of today, I'm getting between 300 and 400 hits a month for Allison Stokke. That's between 8 and 15 visits a day. While, on average several hundred people come per day, the main search term for people visiting is -- Allison Stokke. And I can't figure for the life of me where the hell they're coming from.

If you go to Google and search for Allison Stokke, my website isn't in the first five pages or more. If you go to Google images, still, nothing in the first few pages. The picture I have of her on the original blog entry is one that you can find just about anywhere

Google analytics says the hits are coming from Yahoo. So fine, I go over to Yahoo.

Heck if I can find my website over in Yahoo in the search for Aliison. If they're coming from Yahoo, it's not search or image search.

Allison -- where are you? I know you guys are finding me, but how?

Allison Stokke
What can I say? When you're hot, you're hot


One thing I did learn -- Allison has really taken off. She's grown up a bit (has her own FaceBook page) and geesh, there's fan blogs, MySpace group. Lord knows, the girl probably is tweeting and talking about her own TV show by now.

I just hope she takes it all in stride. Being even a little famous is an awful curse of a thing to deal with.

Far from wilting away from celebrity, it looks like she is beginning to welcome it, appearing on Spike TV's Guy's Choice Award under the category "Sexiest Athlete"

Wordtracker shows about 500 people per day search for Allison. Now maybe I'm an old guy who has completely lost touch with reality, but 500 of you yahoos out on the internet are still searching for Allison 2 years after some other yahoo took a picture of her? Does the phrase "Get a life" mean anything?

Allison Stokke
Allison Stokke, yet again


So I've decided if you can't beat them, join them. I'm going to continue the experiment and see where it heads. Maybe some of these picture surfers can stop and do something useful, like make a comment or something.

As I'm beginning to discover, driving users to your site is about a lot more than just content. I remember when I started blogging, the advice was "just provide fresh content every day, and people will come"

That's total crap. If you're providing content, like me, based around keyword phrases that are generic and competitive as heck, like "technology" or "management"? Good luck getting people to drop by. Yes, there are great sites for sharing content out there. But unless you're one of the privileged thousand or so, you ain't one of them. If, instead of "technology management", I had chosen a much narrower field, say "agile accounting practices" or "Technology Humor for Web Projects" or "fun stories about Allison Stokke" maybe I would be sitting pretty.

Allison Stokke
Just how many pictures of Allison are there on the internet anyway?


It was confusing for a while. I used to look at my server logs and wonder: what the heck are people visiting for those things? One of my other big draws is pictures of Walt Disney, for goodness sake. I'm getting pretty big with Winnie The Pooh fans.

What was happening was I was writing about whatever interested me -- providing unique, creative material on a regular basis. Whenever any of that material hit a sweet spot -- a keyword phrase that didn't have much competition -- it would rise in search engine results and more people would visit. It's the spaghetti approach to content: throw it all on the wall, and see what sticks.

Meanwhile, Allison and I have to learn to live with one another.

What can I say? You have to make hay while the sun is shining.

UPDATE: You guys are now visiting at the rate of over 40K people per month! I still have no idea why.


For those of you interested in seeing and learning more about Allison as her career progresses along with the images and stories of other sexy athletes, there's a great mailing list to join. (clicking on the pictures also takes you to the signup page, as I don't have any more information about her on this site)

57 Comments

Thanks Josh.

I know that Allison definitely did not want in the spotlight -- that was one of the points of my original article.

I would be happy enough to leave her completely alone. I just a) wondered why so many people still cared about googling for her (which seems kind of weird to me) and b) Since that time she has started doing more and more public things, as mentioned in the article.

Allison -- if you're offended by any of this, just let me know. I'm much more fascinated with the entire keyword density and google search popularity phenomenon in general than Allison in particular.

Yes sex sells as I am sure you already know...I was just beginning to respect your contributions to society at large through your blog and social network...I am not sure what your real motives are after this!

My motives are simply to understand the internet and the people on it. As I noted, I've spent a lot of time on serious issues trying to help people.

But I have also done creative things when I felt like it. I did the Twelve Days of Nerdmas. I did the Signs Your Project Might be Off the Rails. Heck, once I even spoke about body painting and had pictures of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.

I write about what I am interested in -- nothing more, nothing less. I can tell you that I am not excited or physically attracted to Allison in any way. (Sorry Allison. Something about the age difference. I'm sure you understand)

I AM curious as to why so many (young folks? weirdos? kids? who?) people come by every day looking for Allison pictures. As I noted in the original post that had Allison, my theory is that people act in mostly stupid and animalistic ways. That's sad. So I simply asked myself the next question: if 300 people a month come by to see Allison, would they pay ten bucks for picutres of Allison? Just how silly is this? Are people obsessing over this girl? Because if not, then why still the visits?

This is not for the money! I doubt anybody would pay. Which leaves me even more confused. What's a picture of some obscure ahtlete (sorry again, Allison) have that is so interesting? After all, I have spent a lot of time on serious issues.

What can I say? I'm not here to impress you. I'm here, like the rest of us, figuring it out as I go along. I do not know the answers. Heck -- I don't even know the questions. I need extra traffic to my site for Allison pictures like I need another hole in my head -- it serves no purpose. I'm just trying to figure it all out. If I'm writing for four years and getting the majority of my search traffic for people looking for Winnie the Pooh, Walt Disney, Allison, and Pluto pictures -- that's just weird. And it's not anything at all like I had planned. Maybe it's normal. Beats me.

Apologies for disappointing you. Honestly. But I am not writing to impress you or your sense of morality.

You see not everybody lives on the internet like you, and while A.S. is a prehistorical fad to you, there are still probably billions of people out there who have never heard of her.

But one day they will, and they will type her name into Google, and arrive here...that is my story, too.

Besides, she is timelessly hot.

I found this page searching Allison Stoke on Google Image, and I did it now cause I came to know her reading an article just few minutes ago and wanted to see her in other pictures, of course only because she is a beautiful girl. Interesting esperiment

ma sei ergonomica???
perchè ho un mal di schiena che nn c sto più dentro....
e complimenti x il culo!!!

Admittedly I did find this page googling for her, after seeing an article on her on a news site, was the first image to come up, all I can say is this blog(?) has made my day, it was a very good read. Might come back for more.

Shall we be completely honest? I Google Imaged her because she's hot, and she will most likely work her way into my head the next time I masturbate and/or have sex with my girlfriend.
I don't think this is even remotely offensive to say this. It is simply the carnal truth. She should feel honored. Why are people shocked when guys want to have sex with a hot girl? Seems like a pretty simple equation to me.

Honest is one thing Mikey, graphic is another.

I'll leave your comment up for now, but it's way over the line for stuff I usually run. The reason I'm leaving it up is that I think it shows the degree of lasciviousness that's out there.

I mean really, buy yourself a Playboy or something. If this is all you got, you're living a very sad life.

Hahaha, i hit your blog because i saw erin andrews vs allison stokke on some other blog so i googled to see if there was any new news on allison and what she moved onto...

and here i am reading your blog post.

Sorry, but ive got to say that i agree with mikey, and i bet a lot of other people reading this will do to.

hah. :/

I just heard of Allison Stokke today, August 2, 2009. I was bored the other day, and I watched the swimming championships. I saw Stephanie Rice from Australia, and I thought, wow, she's cute! Most female athletes - not so much. I then searched Google Images for "sexy female athlete." And here I am.
I agree with Daniel that Mikey is being too graphic for this discussion. But I agree with Mikey in principle. She's hot.
Allison also has another really attractive feature, however. Apparently, she's actually good. I would much rather watch Sharapova than Kournikova, because Sharapova is good.
It's natural to be attracted to a human ideal. Strong athletes are human ideals. Attractive, fit individuals are human ideals. Allison Stokke is both.
P.S. I am a single, lonely male, and I haven't bought a Playboy or other such mag since I connected to the internet.

Kind of ironic that you post hot photographs of a young woman on your site and then wonder why other people might like to see them.
You write as though it's some sort of open letter to Allison, hoping she'll read it. Sound like you're the one who's obsessing over her some two years later...

Very beautiful girl!

I am a girl, and this is how I got here:

I came across a random picture of a girl (not from this site) and thought, "Whoa, I want to have a body like that! Maybe she is a famous athlete?" So I right-clicked "save image" to see if the file name would give me some insight as to who she was. And it did.

SO NOW, I googled Allison Stoke, and searched through the images on google images. On maybe the third page of google images, I clicked on a picture of her, and then I chose to click on the site from which the picture came, and here I am.

Got here from google image search. The picture of the cast stood out and here I find an interesting article. I'm going bookmark your blog and may even come back someday.

Okay, so this is how I happened to come here.

I was on a discussion forum talking to some people about Boston, and one guy says that most of the girls in Boston are "smokeshow". I'd never heard this before, so I googled it, and something came up saying "Allison Stokke is smokeshow". Clicked it - saw her picture, and then googled for images 'cause she's hot.

I Arrived here, read your blog, and thought to myself, "yeah this guy has a point."

Neat experiment.

Seviyeli Sohbet, Allison Stokke, Sohbet Odaları. Chat

allison stokke suka sosi hui

i love yooooooooooooooooooooooou

Reason why Allison is so popular:

1) She's really, really hot
2) She's a really, really, good athlete.

Very, very few women meet both of the above criteria.
The media and fashion industry promote anorexic girls as sex symbols while the porn industry promotes women with fake breasts. Allison proves that a girl can be fit, strong, successful, AND incredibly sexy. She's a model for women everywhere.

Therefore, she's very popular.

i got here by reading another blog on women athletes, saw something about Allison and googled her. First image that came up was the one for this blog.
Like most other people have noted on here she is very hot and apparently a very good athlete. Making her all the more attractive.

I got here because I was interested in the idea that appearance is a choice, so I googled the phrase "really good at looking good." After finding sentences on Angelina Jolie, Christian Bale, Megan Fox, closet anorexics, and conniving office politicians, I found something about Allison Stockke. I had no idea who that was, so I image googled her, and...here I am.

she is too sexy nd in my opinion the sexiest girl in the world

She was featured on ESPN magazine and I wanted to see more of her. I appreciate her physicality...umm more like, she's super friggin hot. If Michaelangelo were still alive, hed have a meticulously crafted marble statue of her in his study. Her athletic prowess makes it all honest and combined with a Cal education...dang! Shes the total package! Will I be classified as a perv now on your blog experiment? Lol.

There was a reference to her in another article I was reading, and I Googled her name to find out what the reference was about. The picture of her with the cast caught me eye. (And now that I see the main picture of her, I remember it from some time back, but her name didn't stick in my mind. Nor did the picture really.)

good laughs or ..:)))

hi ~
i am your fan ~

really i like you ~

bb ~

Hello to all. I’m a sociology student at the U of A (Canada) and would like to toss in my two cents. I believe Ms. Stokkes started off as a ‘viral internet phenomenon’, similar to those random funny video on YouTube that get hundreds of thousands of hits, if not more. Why?... People are bored and internet is readily available and easily accessible; and this is not to say people are lazy of pathetic, but the overused term of ‘surfing the web’ really holds true. I myself am a busy person, active both physically and socially, yet still find myself casually browsing the web for anything, everything, something to catch my interest – from ‘lions attack’ to ‘top 10 most beautiful women’.

Next, and in all honesty, she’s nothing special… but this IS the appeal! Let me explain: she really exemplifies the ‘girl next door’ persona, which in of itself indicates mediocrity, but represents a long standing desire/obsession for many North Americans (which I’m not going to delve into here, but I assume you get what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, she’s attractive, but she’s no supermodel; certainly not extraordinary and wouldn’t really stick out in a crowd on a lazy Tuesday evening at the mall.

And so I ask, who wouldn’t want the girl next door, who wouldn’t want that dream, to find your own unnoticed treasure, your own diamond in the rough? It’s actually very interesting, it can be compared to the ‘American Dream’, which also implies mediocrity (to have a good job, an attractive wife, nice house, new cars, 2 kids, and a few toys) – sounds average to me! But, it’s not average because everybody has it, it’s average because everybody WANTS it. Any thoughts?

You were like # rated hottest athlete rated in Lithuanian newspaper :P nice job sexy beast

Gee, I'm really surprised that people would want to look at a fit, attractive woman with precious few miles on the tires.

Have you ever heard about Ghyslain Raza, Qian Zhijun, Lucy Gao and Melissa Theuriau? If not then Google them, just as I Googled Allison Stokke.

As the poster immediately above seems to indicate, I was reading about various Internet memes. That's how I wound up here. Had never heard of Ms. Stokke.

Not only is my visit random, this is actually the first reply to a blog that im actually interested in. I feel like bloggers have nothing better to do, but it seems now (after reading about your experiment) thats not the case...
As i am going to assume, your a curious minded person like myself. Why else would i read your blog, or in that case search images of a random athlete... Well, thank facebook. A girl I know had a picture of Allison as her default picture. Although this girl is attractive, she is equally quite the douche-bag... and in her mind she clearly sees herself as perfect 10 athlete. However, there is a slight resemblance, to the obviously much more and very attractive allison stokke.
To convince myself that my god would never combine such beauty and such "douch-baggery" (if you will) i did an image search to confirm my theory. And after a few pictures, I stumbled across your blog... read a piece, and then the whole thing; the whole time thinking why is this person so curious as to WHY someone would google a girl who is not only physically attractive, but athletic, making her even hotter.
I think that maybe you are forgetting as "domesticated" as humans are, we are animals at the core. somewhere in our minds dormantly lies that primitive NEED to find a mate and reproduce. like all other animals, we have our prejudices when selecting that mate. The fact that men choose skinny, fit, athletic, intelligent women as mates is clear to me. Chemically, physically, they do it for me.. hey, some guys like fat chicks, or other guys for that matter. WHY is a mystery to me. ask a behavioral therapist.
So here we are, at a crossroad of questions, ive answered yours, and now you can answer mine. What is it that drives you to wonder WHY someone is looking up pictures of allison? Or are you more curious as to the path that took them to the search? either way, thanks for the good read!

Thought you might want to know - your site comes up #1 in a google image search for A Stokke.

Seemed like you were curious about the SEO/analytics and thought you should know that you have the number one slot.

As for why you keep getting traffic (sorry, marketing guy here) I'm guessing its because Stokke hasn't REALLY taken off. She's a slow traveling meme. I never heard of her before today - and I'm betting that's true of most your traffic. She's still totally new to most people - pictures being two years old or not.

cheers.

ohh - and good job on the #1 spot. To pull that off in random experimentation aimed at search patterns when SEO firms out there cant get anything done while charging thousands... that's impressive.

really this is a nice web thank you thanks admin good post super messege

Single people are horny and want some sensory stimuli to help grease the wheels. People naturally want other accompanying stimuli along with the sex experience - ideally, they want a loving relationship. Celebrity contributes a tiny but apparently significant amount towards 'filling out' the experience; meaning that one can fantasize about a 'person' rather than a 'body', a human sex-doll.

Internet gossip about some famous athlete does not enable a porn-browser to 'know' the person in any meaningful sense, but gossip and real-world reference is a way of solidifying the person as someone within some circle of acquaintance, however distant. It humanizes them.

So, my theory = people are trying to make a very poor, unsatisfying sex-substitute slightly better. Or it could just be an obsessive thing, but I think I'm probably right. It definitely has something to do with social instincts and a desire for real human relations. Very sad - let's not judge the world's wankers; we've all been wankers - it's just not a pretty picture of where our society is at; it's a picture of isolation and dissatisfaction.

www.pinkandsmoothplastering.co.uk i cant get found on google so im going to experiment this way. i have had my site for 1 year and had 248 visitors, i,m going to see how many look after 1 month, and i will get back to you.. thats if you let me conduct my own little experiment. oh and she is so damm hot.. She is the spitting image of my fiancee and thats why i looked her up. thanks

I eventually came to your site because allison stokke was an example used in my class about modern technology and society. The internet was the overarching theme for that day and the professor's argument was that the internet is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral. It depends how people use the technology. Anyways, even though I have never heard of her until a year after she went viral, I am not surprised that she got the attention she got. From my experience in track in field, most track girls are not as attractive/pretty as her. To top it off, she's a state champ, which really raises her level from just another pretty face to an accomplished athlete.

This kinda reminds me of Lindsey Vonn (The USA Winter Olympic athlete) who got so much media attention while her fellow women Olympians didn't. Why? Because she's not only super athletic but she's pretty; an asset that most women Olympians don't have.

Good blog post. I'll check out your other post after my final for this class is over. Meanwhile check out my own blog at: http://idonteateggyolk.blogspot.com/

-Dan

How to stumble over Allison? Just a few guys fooling around in a forum, normally posting about computer issues, suddenly someone starts to post pics. Oh, nice, a girl I never saw. Who the hell is she? Some wiki info and than just googling. In fact it's quite rare that an athlete looks good, so Allison found her way into my collection of pics for wallpapers, as I love to see pretty women.

Getting a life? Well, I wasn't hanging around for 2 years chasing her, but for 10 minutes - today and in total. I think you should consider your words yourself, Daniel Markham. It surely took more than 10 minutes to write 2 blogs, collecting pics, wondering about trafic. Btw, are you crash landed from Mars? If you are trafic-aware, you should know that sex is the greatest trafic generator on the Web. No offense, but if you want to have a successful blog, you should know what sells...

Note: this comment was received with a fake email address

ale by ją ruchnął!! good lock from poland

Daniel, could you please remove a very offensive comment, just above mine? Thank you!

That was awesome dude...I too came here because I came across this hot pic of this girl and wanted to look for more. Loved the comment!!!

As for the blog, cool experiment!

Found Alison on the 50 Hottest Women of Sports list on PopCrunch as #3. Googled her name for more pictures since I'd never heard of her. Clicked on the nice photo of her backside and ended up here.

This is really interesting. If you use a very general term when searching, you get lots of possible answers. The more specific you become the fewer the possible answers. But, that's from the point of view of the searcher. Now, flip the whole thing to get the website's view of it. The more general the search term, the more competition you're up against. You're a small fish in a big pond. So, the fewer hits you get. The more specific the search term, the less competition you're up against. You're a bigger fish in a smaller pond. So, you get more hits. Now, if you're a marketer, what do you want? Lots of lookie-loos with the possibility of a few buy-ins, or more really interested lookers with a greater possibility of buy-in? In other words, what's your cost-benefit ratio here? Isn't what you're looking for the most possible buy-ins for the least amount of cost? And how to you get that? It's the fisherman's dilemma: put out a big net and catch a lot of fish, most of which are trash fish, or put out a long line baited for a specific kind of fish and most of what you get is what you want? Sorry for all the fish metaphors. For some reason, looking at girls makes me think of tuna.

For trying so hard, you come so short of being smart. Many people explained it well. There are 6 billion people on the planet, and who knows how many that can access computer. But the point is that 40k hits a year, out of like 100 million men looking at hot women on the internet is not a lot of traffic. Also, sex has been selling for a long time now, and it is a known fact that the most beautiful of hot women will be drooled over by men for decades, maybe centuries to come. Just like Marilyn Monroe. If you can't figure out why people are still looking at her two years after the picture was posted online, then you are doing a bunch of fancy analytical work for nothing. Any person with a good functioning brain could tell you why she is popular, and why she is STILL popular online.

Good article here. I run track and field, and I came across a picture of Allison Stokke so I googled her name and this site was one of the first ones to come up. It is interesting what search terms lead people to different blog. I've written about 100 blog posts on various topics, but this one that I wrote about a teacher suing her students because of a rabbit phobia gets a ton of hits, simply because it's got a pic of Frank from Donnie Darko in it. Weird.

This is my 2nd time (or is it my 3rd?) to stumble upon your blog. I got here by doing a Google search for "Allison", not specifically Allision Stokke, and scrolling through the Google images until I found one that interested me and clicked on it. Sure, Allison is attractive, but as one commenter pointed out, that "Girl Next Door" thing is part of the attraction, since Allison is not a top model, actress, or porn star with images of her in a swimsuit, lingerie, or less. However, there's also some other Allisons that I'll probably check out, too.

I've found that if you run a Google image search of a woman's first name, almost any female name, you're likely to turn up some pictures of attractive women. As someone else said, it's just web browsing to see if something interesting comes up.

Here's what led me here. For some reason, I thought of the phrase "I like sex" and that reminded me of good old Mahir Cagri. Then I looked up his page for old time's sake. I clicked on the link to the page about him on Wikipedia, and that led me to the Wikipedia page about... here it is... "Internet phenomena".

So, hmm, okay, scroll down, Homestar Runner, Frog in a Blender, All your base (yawn, yawn, yawn)... Allison Stokke, hmm, never heard of her. In Google image search, your image of her (attractive) back side is the top-ranked image for her. There you go. No big mystery. Just random randomness. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yeah! This girl is ripped and smoking. I wish we could recruit female athletes and role models into today's armed forces. But I am a douche bag and few people see things my way.

Your article is nice but it could use more pictures of Allison.

Thought you might want to know how I ended up here since you think links to your blog are burried... I just heard of Allison Stokke for the first time last week. I google image searched her name and the VERY FIRST image to come up is her in her leg brace which when clicked takes you right to this very blog post.

Oh... and the reason I googled her name? 'cause she's f-ing ridiculous beautiful and I wanted to see more. She's probably bumped someone from my top 10 of all time... sweet JESUS!

A friend asked me to google Ms. Stokkes, and clicking on one of the first images in Google brought me to your clever article. As a server admin, I found it a far more interesting read than my friend's obsession with unobtainable women. ;)

Have a good one!

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Comment Policy: I really, really, really enjoy comments, but if all you have to offer is general platitudes like how happy you are to have found my site and what a wonderful place it is, I will delete your comment and report your comment as spam. Please try to either tell me I am wrong, sympathize with my point, expand on what I'm saying, or offer your own experiences or opinions. If you just want a link your best bet is to just ask for one. Probably won't work, but at least be honest about it. No name-calling and please keep the profanity as low as possible. If your grandma can't read it or you wouldn't say it in person, don't write it here. Thanks.

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DanielBMarkham published on May 19, 2009 2:12 PM.

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