Who's Dominique Dicaprio and why is she ahead of Megan Fox and Jessica Lange in search trends as of now?
That's a good question because as of this writing, Dominique Dicaprio (no relation to the actor) is the new "Miss Howard TV", and the number three hottest search in Google Trends, but when one clicks on her name, no news site source is listed on the left, but a bunch of blog site sources are listed on the right.
(UPDATE: Zimbio became the first news site to post the Dominique Dicaprio information.)
If I do a back search on Dominique Dicaprio's trend history on Google Insights for Search, I get zip. Nada. Nothing. Yet, she's the one of the top Google trends. By contrast, Megan Fox and Jessica Lange have a long history.
I've noticed what may be a glitch in Google Insight for Search where listings from news sites and not blog sites dominate the historical searches because blog sites are not well represented on Google News - they have a separate category. If the system worked as it should, the current blog listings should have come up in the overall results for her name.
So in a way, Google itself is contributing to the blogs over news content problem. Unless one knows how to read between the search results, they'd miss a lot of traffic building content that's not out of bounds to post, if you know what I mean.
Think about it.
Let's face it, Jessica Lange's plastic surgery rumor's not all that big a deal either, but the mainstream press was all over it because it came from a big event, the Emmy Awards. If it came from Howard TV, who would know except for the blogs?
This common process is one reason why blogs tend to break news missed by mainstream media sites. Ok, Dominique Dicaprio being named "Miss Howard TV" is not important information in that it has nothing to do with America Foreign Policy. But it has everything to do with our economy.
Everything.
In an Internet age, content is king and the main reason why mainstream media news sites are commonly outdone by their blog competitors it that mainstream media news sites have a human filter that has little to do with the reality of what people are consuming.
Sticking one's finger in the wind of social change only gets that person's finger dirty. Learning to read traffic data and write for the Internet is the key. Also being a student of society helps, too.
As I tell anyone who asks, people want to read about people. Period. Without people the eyeball economy would not exist. But it does, its grown, and so now we have three camps: people who understand it, people who don't and complain about it, and people who don't know it exists.
The people who get it are the fewest in number of the three.
The folks in the middle offer an excuse that of course is designed to make them look good, like "That's not important to me" or "It's not in our demographic" - which is funny because I find more often than not that many people that one would think aren't looking at a something, are because, well again, they're people.
And even the people who make negative comments play into the game. They think that by making the insult they discourage coverage of the information, but it only adds to the buzz around it. And reading but not commenting helps because its traffic.
See, there's no escape from, well, who we are.
This is the reason why the Huffington Post smashes all news websites. It's the reason why the Gawker blog sites are so valuable. It's also the reason why Glam Media's worth millions and Perez Hilton's traffic numbers are unbelievable.
And why journalism school teachers invite TMZ.com's Harvey Levin to meet their students.
It's also the reason why some mainstream media news sites will fail, even as their editors talk about their highbrow standards and demographics.
News is everywhere; but websites have to use it to pays the bills. Otherwise, forget about surviving, even with a government bailout.
Stay tuned.
