Tuesday, February 28, 2012

What's With Google and Jackfruit?

Flavors of Brazil isn't written to make money (that's for sure) nor is it an attempt to garner huge numbers of hits in an attempt to be the biggest this or the biggest that in the blogosphere. However, we're human, and since Google/Blogspot does provide bloggers with a mountain of statistics about how one's blog is progressing - how many people access the blog, which specific posts they read, where they come from, what operating system they use etc., we confess that we do check out the statistics from time to time. It's human nature after all.

Recently we've noticed that one post, from January 20th of this year, has been accessed many more times than almost any other, and we're not sure why. This article, about the Brazilian jackfruit, seems to be Google's search engine's current favorite post on Flavors of Brazil, by a long shot.

Of all the almost 800 posts on this blog, the champion in terms of hits has always been this one from September, 2010 which is a recipe for making the dough for a Brazilian snack called a pastel. In the 17 months since it was published, it's been viewed about 5500 times. It's a practical post, with a recipe, so it seems logical that it would be frequently accessed.

The jackfruit post, which is only about 40 days old, is rapidly catching up on the reigning champion. It's been viewed 4500 times up to today. That's a daily rate of more than 100 hits. What's going on?

Here at Flavors of Brazil, we do like jackfruit as well as the next brasileiro, but we're a bit stumped when we try to figure out why so many people are interested in jackfruit. What's it about this giant tropical and fruit and its relation to Google? We don't claim to be botanists or any other sort of expert on the jackfruit, but it does seem that when someone asks Google about jackfruit, Flavors of Brazil is Google's go-to site.

Anybody have any suggestions why this might be? We'd love to hear.
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4 comments:

  1. Tom Le MesurierFebruary 29, 2012 at 2:33 PM

    Hi James, it's an interesting question! I had a similar post (though nowhere *near* that level of daily hits) back when Eat Rio was on Blogspot. I did a post about Mandioca and Farofa and started off (somewhat obscurely) with an image of Pangea (the ancient supercontinent). That particular post was way out in front in terms of hits and after some research I found that the Pangea image was showing up in the first page if you did a Google *image* search for pangea. Who knew that many people were searching for an image of Pangea?! Perhaps your jackfruit post is the same?

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  2. JamesMarch 2, 2012 at 9:48 AM

    Thanks, Tom, I think you've given me the answer. When I googled jackfruit in Google images, the link to Flavors of Brazil was the very first one. So that probably accounts for the large number of hits.
    Now the question is why so many people want a picture of a jackfruit!
    JAMES

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  3. Denise BrowningMarch 4, 2012 at 8:20 PM

    Hi, James!
    I love to read your blog. Your view of my country as a foreigner living there appeals me.
    Have you tried to see where most of entries came from by your blog's flag counter?
    You may get some answers.
    I think Asians are crazy for the fruit. It is related to durian. I have seen all kind of dishes that they make with jackfruit. Because my food blog frombraziltoyou is about to debut a new segment, I intend to post about that. Another thing is: people in countries that do not have that fruit and just heard about, may be curious. I am always curious about something that I am not familiar with. Hope I have helped somehow. Have a great week!

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  4. JamesMarch 7, 2012 at 9:08 AM

    Thanks, all. I think that we've figured out why there is such a large number of hits on my jackfruit (jaca) post. I checked out Tom's suggestion and it turns out his supposition was correct.
    JAMES

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