google experiment results

In case anyone’s wondering who the mysterious Alex Polier was in that Gettysburgesque post Friday — my employer can tell you more.
I put that post together to see how Google would react. The post obviously had no substance — just Lincoln’s words with names subbed in a few places. And I didn’t feel guilty about using her name since I provided no context — the only people who’d find it would be people who already knew her name and were actively searching for it.
The answer: Google started sending me hits Saturday mid-morning, then mysteriously turned off the spigot for a few hours. Altavista and other search engines kept them coming. Then early Sunday morning, Google recanted and slapped me on the front page of results (No. 7 for most of the day, No. 3 for the longer form of her name).
I’m still getting tons of hits — about 10 a minute at the moment from Google alone. I’m on pace for about 1,500 more hits than normal today.
(Update, 1:39 p.m.: Make that more like 3,000 more hits than normal today.)
(Update, 2:10 p.m.: Make that more like 4,500 more hits than normal. Geez. Interestingly, I’m getting a ton of “alexandra” hits and very few “alex” ones now, despite the fact this site shows up on the first results page for both searches. Since the “alex” search shows a more recognizable Gettysburg excerpt in the result preview, I’m guessing more people realize it won’t be worth a clickthrough.)
(Update, 3:21 p.m.: Hits now coming at about 20 a minute. Commenter John Scott points out that the AP story that moved today — the first exposure in most legitimate media to The Name — calls her Alexandra, not Alex. Hence the Alexandra spike. Most of the underground mentions over the weekend had used Alex. At the moment, it’s 2,201 searchers for “Alexandra” vs. 821 for “Alex.”)
(Update, Tuesday, 10:16 a.m.: Well, the final results are in. Total unique visitors: 5,574. Since the last update, the pro-Alexandra shift has been more pronounced: 2,063 Alexandras vs. 106 Alexes, matching the AP’s usage. I’m still getting about 1.5 hits a minute on her name.)
Don’t worry, regular readers — this experiment in Drudgery is now ended.