Kings Island: Heavily Googled this week

Ironically I've been searching stuff on the park all week. We have a big group outing planned there the weekend of June 26th =)

I wonder if any of that has to do with the fact that Kings Island's web address is NOT "kingsisland.com" (it's "visitkingsisland.com". kingsisland.com is a Canadian web advertising company). Or the fact that Kings Island did an automated telephone call campaign last week.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Would the two separate mentions of the park on Glee be enough to cause the big bump up in searches?

I guess when Neil Patrick Harris AND Olivia Newton John mention a park, people listen.

You know, I think Dave's probably right. I hadn't even thought about that when I posted the story. I too have to Google it every time because I don't remember what it is. But if I want to go to Cedar Point, Kennywood, Holiday World, or whatever, it's obvious.

I bet kingsisland.com gets some pretty heavy traffic this time of year as well. Stupid web squatters.

Yeah, I know there are a lot of people who use Google for everything...in fact *we have professors* who don't even know that they have a URL bar and just automatically start with a Google search.

But I find that about 85%-90% of the time if I am trying to get to the web site for a particular business (rather than just looking for general information) I can usually guess the URL. Searching Google is fast, but typing http://nameofthebusinessiwanttosee.com is usually faster.

Which is why companies that go for .biz URLs are generally l0zerz. :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan said:
I wonder if any of that has to do with the fact that Kings Island's web address is NOT "kingsisland.com" (it's "visitkingsisland.com". kingsisland.com is a Canadian web advertising company). Or the fact that Kings Island did an automated telephone call campaign last week.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

That's right. It was all us Gleeks. ;)

I've been trying to teach my mom how to not Google every web page that she wants t visit for years now. She won't even save any frequently visited pages in her bookmarks (or favorites). It's frustrating.

I read in an article, a few months ago, that a lot of people use Google this way. That's the wrong way to surf the web. (NOT imho either. It's a fact. lol)

I don't use bookmarks either. Too unwieldy to keep more than a handful of things up there. I don't want to have to start organizing things in folders to find stuff, that's what keyword search is *for*.

I too wonder if this has anything to do with the Kings Island mentions on Fox's Glee. With the huge number of users Google has, I have a hard time conceiving that tri-state searchers looking for Kings Island's new website could account for its ranking with the generic zoo, well-known Disney, or ubiquitous Six Flags, all of which are nationally known brands. As impressive as Planet Snoopy and the Starlight Spectacular are, I don't see those causing a major interest in the park- at least not any more than previous seasons. A couple mentions on a hit TV show, however, might cause a spike in Google searches.

Either way, good for Kings Island. They've made some great changes this season, and they deserve the recognition (food prices aside). Maybe this will encourage further change for the better.

I don't watch GLEE. What was the context of the Kings Island reference?

Rokuchan, I'll be there for the two days before your group outing. i'll be en route to Sandusky when you arrive at KI!

I like the way Chrome approaches the address bar. Start typing, and it'll begin to auto-complete first on matches to your bookmarks (page title or URL), then to search results. So for example, when I want to check my bank account balance, I can type "c-h-enter" and get to Chase, because it's the only bookmark I have that starts in "ch."

Mike Gallagher said:
I don't watch GLEE. What was the context of the Kings Island reference?

Rokuchan, I'll be there for the two days before your group outing. i'll be en route to Sandusky when you arrive at KI!

Woohoo! I'm really looking forward to getting back to KI this year. And Graeter's ice cream. Mmmmmm....Love Cincinatti area for that reason alone!

The Glee references were Olivia Newton John discussing a benefit she was doing there, and then Neil Patrick Harris's guest appearance character mentioned the park as well. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't geeking a little when they did. Hehe.

The trick with those auto-complete address bars is to find and nuke all the default bookmarks that get thrown in there. In Safari I keep deleting "webmail.mac.com" and "insidemacgames.com" because they interfere with the webmail and inside sites at work. But Apple keeps adding them back in with Safari updates. ARGHS!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

When I want to check my bank account, I click the bookmark that I have for it in my bookmark toolbar. Two clicks; one for the folder, and one for the bookmark. That's all I have to do to get to CoasterBuzz too.

I find that that would be easier than having to type anything, but...

YMMV! lol

That's one of the great things about the "internets". The many awesome tools and browsers to choose from make using the internetnet easily personalized. We are lucky to live in a time where we can use such an amazing invention.

I, too, would like to know the context that KI was mentioned on Glee. I think that LOST was on at the same time, so I only saw a few episodes of Glee, and I liked it a lot. Now that all the Losties are dead, maybe I can catch up on Glee. ;)

I keep only a few precious bookmarks (and use the Firefox plug-in Xmarks to sync them between my various machines), but like Brian I don't want to be worried about a large hierarchy of folders for all my common sites. It's usually actually faster for me to type the URL or a well-selected keyword search than to find the site I want in a list of bookmarks.

But then, I'm an old command-shell fogie anyway, so these fingers are used to typing :)

I still use www.pki.com when trying to get to King's Island's website. But the odds of new people doing that are slim