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Allison Stokke?

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


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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.


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UPDATE: You guys are now visiting at the rate of over 40K people per month! I still have no idea why. Do me a favor and please visit some of the advertisers around here so that I can keep the site up for others to visit. I tried to find some cool stuff to advertise. Thanks in advance for the help.

36 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!

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

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