Back in late February, I interviewed several people at ConDFW and posted those interviews over the next few months.  Links to those interviews can be found in the sidebar.  The longest interview was with Mark Finn, and it was so long that I broke it into two parts, which I posted a week apart.  The second part was shorter than the first because I chose to make the break at a point where the topic of our conversation shifted rather than at the halfway point.

Both parts of the interview were well received and quickly found a place in the top ten most popular posts, which was fine with me.  For some reason, the second half of the interview had about 10% more page views than the first, maybe because more people linked to the second half.  I wasn’t really concerned, since both parts of the interview got a lot of traffic, Mark was happy with the interview, and Adventures Fantastic was linked to on other blogs and websites.

Then about six or eight weeks ago, something unusual happened.

The first part of the interview began to pick up more traffic.  At first I didn’t think much of it, because both halves of the interview have gotten a small but steady flow of traffic since the initial interest died down, as have several other posts I’ve done since I started this blog.  Blogger shows the ten most popular posts, and there’s always some relative movement in the middle of that list.

But I noticed something.  While the first part of the interview saw an upswing in the number of page views, the second half didn’t.  There would be the occasional bump in traffic, but nothing like what the first half of the interview was getting. In fact, the first half of the interview has surged to be the number one spot by a noticeable margin.  As I write this, it was the second most viewed post in the last day, and the third most viewed post in both the last week and the last month.  In other words, it’s gotten more traffic than most of the posts I’ve done in the last month.

First, let me say “Thank you” to everyone who has looked at that interview.  It’s extremely gratifying to me to know that an interview I conducted months ago is still of interest to people and still speaks to them on some level.  It encourages me to do more interviews, and I will.

But I’m also curious.  Why has the first part of the interview seen such an increase in interest but not the second?  It’s the scientist in me.  I’m trained to notice trends in data and question what causes them.  Please understand, I’m not unhappy that this one post is still generating traffic and interest.  Just the opposite.  I’m thrilled.  I’m just puzzled that the other half isn’t seeing the same response. The only thing I can figure out is that “Tom Sharkey” is part of what the attraction is.  That’s one of the most common search terms, and Mark discussed Tom Sharkey in the first part of the interview.  The numbers aren’t a good match, meaning that the number of page views is much higher than the number of times “Tom Sharkey” shows up in the search terms, so I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it.

If anyone has any idea what’s caused this sudden interest in the first part of the Mark Finn interview, I’d be interested in hearing it.  My curiosity is driving me up the wall.