What’s with People and Tires?

Blogging, humor, lessons learned, rankings, technology 2 Minutes

I would think when most people go to Google for help, they are searching for things like “Mexican restaurants near me”, or “10-day weather forecast for New York”, or “who’s that really clever blogger that has blather in his blog name”.

But then there are whole subcultures out there using much narrower search queries, and for some reason, my blog seems to be the go-to place when someone wants to know what company makes the most tires in the world.

A couple of years ago I had written a post “And the World’s Largest Tire Manufacturer Is… Drumroll Please…“, and for whatever reason, it is by far my most popular post. Nearly two years later and it is usually my most viewed post every day.

At first, when I saw how many views it was getting, I thought I was being hacked or spammed. And while that may still be the case, it also seems true that when people are actually searching for such an answer, my site is one of the places Google returns as possibly having the answer.

The screenshot above shows the most popular search terms that people used to arrive at my web site since I began blogging five years ago. Of the top 14 queries, five of them relate to tires.

However, as is often the case, if somebody ended up at my blog with the hope of actually learning something useful, they would be sadly disappointed. You see, the blog I wrote about tires is actually a trick question (you’ll have to click on the link above to find out the answer).

I’ve written about this phenomenon before: “The Day My WordPress Stats Went Wild“. My blog had been averaging about 350-400 views per day when I wrote that blog back in September. However, on that particular day, my blog had 5,385 views, of which 5,021 were for my blog post about tires.

The reason I am writing about it again is that the view spike has spiked again the past few days for that post:

Tuesday: 415 views of tire post
Wednesday: 279 views
Thursday (so far): 141 views

Typically, that post gets about 100 views per day.

Now I’m not complaining. It’s not like it’s extra work for me to have people read my post about tires. And it’s nice getting the extra views.

But I just don’t get why so many people seem to be interested in tires.

I’m also curious how in the world if somebody typed “Amazon” into Google search, which returns over 4 billion results, they somehow ended up at my site 65 times. They must have done a lot of scrolling…

P.S. If you do type “blathering bloggers” my site comes in fourth place out of 424,000 results. I guess there are a lot of blathering bloggers out there…

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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69 thoughts on “What’s with People and Tires?”

      1. Yes you are a big deal. So how can I reach that status? I once wrote a 25 page term paper in college regarding tire separation and who’s fault it was that people were dying. Bridgestone vs Ford. Then I had court duty and guess what the case was??? You guessed it. A teenage driver, Ford Explorer flips after having a blowout killing someone in the other car that was hit. Needless to say the prosecution or defense didn’t want me for trial. 😂

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Yeah well! I knew too much to be dangerous and keep the jury asking questions if I’d been selected. They thought biased. I didn’t conclude in my paper one way or the other. 😊

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Theory 1—You uncovered Putin’s new strategy—let’s inflate the numbers for Borden! That will screw up the country and throw everyone into a dither.😎

    Theory 2—It’s National Tire Week! 😊

    That is weird. Let us know if you crack the case.

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. I like how you and Brad came up with theories!

      as for Theory 1, are you suggesting the Russians want me to run for President? All I can say is: “if nominated I will not run, and if elected, I will not serve.”
      as for Theory 2, I just checked and found out that May 18-24 is National Tire Safety Week. If your hunch is correct, my blog might EXPLODE that week. Maybe I’ll take out some ads on Facebook to promote my blog that week 🙂
      Have a great weekend, Pete!

      Liked by 1 person

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  4. such a funny phenomenon, i am endlessly fascinated by what people search for. and your blog is great, so i’m sure that’s the real reason and the tires are a bonus

    Liked by 3 people

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  5. I think you may have stumbled across a unique combination of things that tick all the right boxes for the search algorithms. A commonly searched for item, paired with an active web site that posts new material everyday. Most web sites don’t update and add content that regularly and the algorithms are keen to that. However, it is more fun to postulate the less common theories, so here goes:

    Theory 1 – You had a bad stats day one day and you incorporated your blog post into an assignment in all your lectures to artificially drive up your numbers.

    Theory 2 – People just love the shit out of tires.

    Theory 3 – You surreptitiously tagged your post with nothing but sex and porn references except for the word “Tire”.

    Theory 4 – Your post was some of the greatest writing the world as ever known and is currently being considered for an honored spot in the Library of Congress as an example of literary excellence. Followed likely by the Noble Prize for literature.

    😁😂🤣

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. I keep trying to stumble upon more such search algorithm combinations, to no avail.

      As to your other theories:

      1. I do that once a year when I try and pull an April Fools Day prank on my students..
      2. weirdos…
      3. I do that with all my posts and nothing seems to happen…
      4. I really want one of those Noble prizes!

      Have a great weekend, Brad! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

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  6. The subject of Rubber tires and LEGO got me thinking about where Hot Wheels would stack up against the top manufacturers. Granted, they produce hard plastic tires/wheels … According to a quickie web search, about 16.5 Hot Wheels toy vehicles are produced every minute. My quick, rough math suggests Mattel would have a viable claim toward the top of that list if plastic donuts were calculated. Just saying, I’ve been dropping the LEGO stats on any car guy/gal I come across these days.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. you may be on to something with the Hot Wheels! I’ll do some digging as well. I remember growing up I was always more of a Matchbox kind of kid…

      I’m sure all the guys and gals you come across will be quite impressed with your LEGO trivia… 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

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  9. It’s strange how people find our blogs, isn’t it? As you piqued my interest I’ve just looked up my stats. The most frequent is ‘Nanci Griffith retired,’ which derives from a couple of posts I wrote some years ago featuring her songs. However I did not at any point query whether she had retired. The next five search queries all contained the word ‘sex.’ I once wrote a post on Think About Sex Day – yes, it really does exist – and this gave me the excuse to tag the post with ‘sex.’ I guess I’ve disappointed many with that 😊

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. that is strange with the Nanci Griffith results. And I’m sure tagging a post with “sex” can do wonders for search results! 🙂
      Nothing wrong with a little click bait now and then!

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. It is rather odd, and I’ve never worked it out. I deliberately tagged the click bait word to see what response it got – still get a few each week, on much lower numbers than yours.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. You can play to an audience, can’t you! I just ran the Nanci Griffith retired one again – still at no.9 on the first page of results. Very odd!

        Liked by 1 person

      5. I have just re-read both of my Nanci Griffith-related posts, and the word ‘retired’ doesn’t feature in either. But the penny has just dropped: it’s in the tag line at the top of my blog, so must be being picked up from there. Who knew, eh?

        Liked by 1 person

      7. If I’m right all I have to do is write about them! Just checked this week’s stats: 3 referrals so far from that phrase. Maybe I need to write a post claiming Beyoncé or Bieber are retiring…

        Liked by 1 person

    1. I’m not going to defend the U.S. spelling of a word versus a British spelling – you guys win every time.
      I just searched for “world’s biggest tyre manufacturers”, and I see my site near the top. Maybe Britain has blocked my site… 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. That’s really weird. I’ve just tried it again with the exact same search words and you don’t appear on any of the first 15 pages of results. Must be something to do with how Google’s algorithms work, but might be worth a check of your SEO to see if there are any settings you could adjust. As for the spelling, it’s a cheap target for us – we claim it as our language but in reality it is derived from many sources, most of whom have invaded us at some point!

        Liked by 1 person

  11. Excellent, Jim! I’ll come to you when we need a new set of tyres for the Bentley. I know what you mean – I get some bizarre search terms too – and I’ve a way to go before I get 5,000 page views in a day!

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  14. I love LEGO – I never really thought about the tire aspect…
    One of my most popular posts was about Induction Cooking Pots and Pans. It still gets a few views a day, even though I wrote it 9 years ago.

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