Emily Bell, editor of The Guardian Unlimited, revealed that 1/3 of their visitors links through to an archived article. That means that, instead of coming through the front door at guardian.co.uk, a large number of users are deep linking into the site, following links from google and the blogosphere.
Two of last week’s most popular pages mentioned by Bell are good example of the type of things internet users are linking to directly: crack addicted squirrels in South London and Flipper the Firing Dolphin let loose by Katrina.
It seems reasonable enough to think that articles about computers and technology will be popular online since, afterall, it’s the one thing all internet users, almost by definition, are likely to have at least some interest in – but crack addicted squirrels and flipper the firing dolphin? Maybe someone else can explain…