2006 Blog Year-in-Review
by Eric Goldman
Most Popular Blog Posts of the Year
1) O’Reilly and the “Web 2.0” Trademark
2) NYT on Fair Use and Documentaries (overflow from Slashdotting of #1)
3) GEICO v. Google Opinion (Finally) Issued
4) Competitor’s Keyword Ad Purchase May Be Trademark Infringement–Edina Realty v. TheMLSonline
5) Lane’s Gifts Click Fraud Lawsuit Near Settlement
6) Keyword Purchases Not a Trademark Use–Merck v. Mediplan Health Consulting
7) Griper Gets 47 USC 230 Defense for Reposted Article–D’Alonzo v. Truscello (I’m not sure why this post made the top 10 list. I think it may be fueled by comment/referral spam)
8) Downloading Music Isn’t Fair Use–BMG v. Gonzalez
9) Search Engine Liability for Selling Keywords Redux–800-JR Cigar v. GoTo.com
10) KinderStart Second Amended Complaint
Overlooked Posts (some of my favorites that didn’t get the traffic they might have)
* Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
* Princess Bride and Jurisprudence
* Sexy Professors are Better Professors (?)
* Trademark Travesty of the Month–SMJ Group v. 417 Lafayette Restaurant
* Teenager Busted for Creating Fake “News” Story
* Piracy Loss Estimates as a Managed Number
* Your License, Registration and DNA, Please? (by Ethan Ackerman)
Blog Statistics
* The number of unique vistors in December 2006 was over double those in December 2005, and total visits and pageviews for the year were about 3X that from 2005. It’s unclear how much of this was due to comment/referral spammers and other robotic activity.
* Google provided 88% of the referrals from search engines (last year it was 78%).
* Top 10 search phrases used by referrals to find the blog: geico, sex.com, barbri class action, 50.cent oprah, law professor salary, eric goldman blog, gifts for professors, law professor salaries, eric goldman, donotcall.gov
* The blogs have a total of about 860 posts, of which about 300 were made this year. Most commonly blogged categories include search engines (67 posts this year), derivative liability (47 posts), trademark (43 posts), copyright (37 posts) and adware/spyware (27 posts).
* As with last year, only about half of blog visitors used Windows Internet Explorer as their browser.
* Visitors came from over 150 countries, including Australia, Germany (#2 and #3), Malawi and Saint Vincent & Grenadines (with 8,000 Internet users in 2005 per the CIA factbook)
* Ad clickthrough rate of 0.38% with eCPM of $2.41. I’m not thrilled with these numbers.