In a blatant attempt to capitalize on the Internet buzz over former “American Idol” contestant Corey Clark’s (photo by Michel Boutefeu / Getty Images file) kissing and telling the whole world that he slept with Paula Abdul, I’m blogging about it. It’s actually an experiment.
Corey Clark was a contestant on the show but got kicked off when his criminal activity came to light. He appears to be an opportunitistic hustler and batterer of his own sister. He claims that Abdul slept with him and bought him stuff; she denies it.
I don’t watch the show and couldn’t care less about any of it. But Google does. 
I will share the results of my experiment in a few days. Did I already mention that Corey Clark is a cad?
Update: As part of my blog consulting venture, I’m learning about search engine optimization. Most bloggers already know that relevant key words in titles and posts sometimes result in traffic spikes from Google searches. For instance, several days before the election, I blogged about Scrappleface’s parody of a John Kerry concession speech. A few days later, after Kerry actually conceded, my site meter exploded with Googlers searching for “John Kerry concession speech.”
To a lesser degree, something similar is happening with the post on Jennifer Wilbanks’s 911 call. Some news outlet has probably recently discussed the transcript of the call. The key is predicting which searches will be popular so your page is archived and ranked by the time everyone else catches up. I’m trying to build my traffic, and relying on high-traffic bloggers for links is passé. And unreliable.
Update II: No hits for “Corey Clark” yet, but searches for “Wilbanks,” “911 call Wilbanks,” and “Jennifer” are generating traffic. A few people are searching under “Jennifer Wilbanks learning disability” and “Jennifer Wilbanks insane.”
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I just read the Smoking Gun article–is that site generally reliable? I’m asking because they have a doozy on Bill O’Reilly.
I never have watched “American Idol.” Not even once. Who is Paula Abdul?
What a whoos.
La Shawn, are you aware the John Hawkins at Right Wing News challenged bloggers to pick their choice of the 20 blogs or sites plus links, if they could only visit 20 that year, what would they be? I made my list, and you are on it!
LaShawn I’m not sure if you know this, but when I view your RSS Feed in my reader (Newsgator). All the images you link to come up with LARGE black boxes with the following text in them, “This images was hotlinked from a site hosted on Blogs-About-Hosting. This action is unauthorized.”
I’m not sure what the deal is there.
I find Mr Clark’s credibility suspect, IF in fact he had an affair with Ms. Abdul, why wouldn’t he have cried foul back when he was dropped from the show?
People who try to extend their 15 minutes of fame with sensational claims are like 4th of July sparklers, they burn bright for a couple of seconds, then we throw them away.
Tim – I’ve disabled hotlinking. If someone wants to link to an image on my blog, they will need to download it to their hard drive and upload to their site, rather than linking to it directly from my site.
Hotlinking drains bandwidth.
He is a goon, and even if it was true he is wrong for putting her out there after she tried to put him on. Snitches suck.
LaShawn….
Now that’s a savvy way to try to build traffic.
For me, when I follow a link to a blog, after I get the information I want, I don’t visit the blog again.
But that’s me. I do a lot of mental filtering. For example, I never “see” advertisments. Those that pass zone alarm that is. I never have “seen” advertisements. The ad area is always in the same place so I do a mental “white out” of that area.
Now what is really annoying is the javascript “tool tip” ad windows that appear. I don’t visit those sites again.
La Shawn,
Savvy indeed. I love looking at my site stats and finding that many of my visitors come from particular searches they make on a search engine (most often Google, of course). It’s cool to see the particular search terms people use when coming upon my site.
As for Corey Clark…a cad indeed. I think the entire show is disgusting. It stains our cultural fabric by celebrating homogeneity in the music industry.
My only problem with this case is that it seems American Idol producers are too arbitrary in how they kick off these criminals. They keep on a convicted drug user this season but kick off a woman who legally posed for internet porn. THey can do whatever they want, but consistency certainly isn’t their strong suit.
Oh, do have fun, LaShawn. Quite smart.
Actually, such things start accidentally, don’t they? I cracked a joke about re-naming my blog “Miss O’Hara’s Sex Blog” last week, since we’d had some discussions about sexuality (it’s my pastor’s fault – he did a whole sermon on it), porn, promiscuity, et cetera – purely from the spiritual perspective, but…boy. Now I’m getting hits for “sex blog” and “Xanga sex”, et cetera. It’s actually a bit funny…although I do hope they stick around, read the related posts, and find the truth about God’s plan and hopes for us. Maybe it will save folks some heartache?
Anyhow, have fun.
I find the google search info interesting.
Like Miss O’Hara mentioned, I like the fact that people can be “Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places” and end up finding some truth. (Or would that be “Wookin’Pu Nub”?)
The only thing interesting about American Idol is the first few episodes showing the rejected contestant try outs. As for Corey he should lose that Howard Stern haircut ASAP.
I like the word cad. It needs to be used more often in today’s crass society.
Wendy Williams has been saying since last year that Paula Abdul was seeing Corey Clark.
I’m guessing the hits will start after the ABC show airs tonight, or at least as it gets closer to the show. One suggestion though, and I hope you don’t find this off color, but I would definitely add the word “sucks” or “sux” or even “loser”. I suspect that’s far more likely to be googled with “Corey Clark” than “cad” by most people looking for info
“A few people are searching under “Jennifer Wilbanks learning disability†and “Jennifer Wilbanks insane.—
My really great laugh for today.
I always thought of Bill Clinton as the “Cad in Chief” for dispatching people to find dirt on former girlfriends to prevent “bimbo eruptions.”
La Shawn — you’re right. There is and should be a double standard in these situations.
It’s a man’s job to protect women, which means that when he’s in a position of power he doesn’t take advantage of that power, and when the woman is in a position of power – even if she’s a seductress and takes advantage of that – then the man should keep his mouth shut.
So even if this guy’s accusations are correct, he’s a jerk for blabbing about it.
Posistion of power or not, to kiss and tell is bad behavior.
He’s proud of this. He’s not coming forward to report an abuse. He’s trying to profit. Like LB said, he’s a cad.
I wrote about Paula Abdul (aka “Pauler”, if you’re British like Simon Cowell) and Corey Clark last week (http://www.ramblestrip.com/blog/2005/04/spin-drew-her-in.html) and it has delivered a ton of hits from Google searches. So your experiment will probably do the same, LaShawn. Corey Clark was an interesting character – he reminded me of Snoop Dogg and the members of DeBarge (remember them?) crashed into each other. Snoop Dogg DeBarge, if you will.
I also talk about American Idol every week in a post (it sucked me in, I can’t help it. I accidentally watched one of the first episodes of season 1 back in 2001, and I’ve been hooked since.) I get a lot of traffic from searches for various contestant names (I always use their full name and the song they sang in my post).
And along the same lines, I tend to get several hits a week for someone searching for “Clay Aiken waldo”. Ack.
I noticed that Google seems to be filtering stuff and I think if you just do a simple test. I Googled myself and got things that I posted on this blog. Then I Yahooed and my blog came up under my name. I hope that Google is not trying to filter out certain types of political leanings from their search engine. Well if the billion dollar company wants to become a million dollar company by ignoring many users on the internet for ideology then so be it. They would not be where the are if it wasn’t for people like me. I am using Yahoo now!!!!
Didn’t Paula Abdul have that “Milli Vanilli” type scandal in the 1990s, whereby she paid someone else to sing her lyrics—- Allegedly.
Sigh: ethically challenged celebrities.
I watch no TV, except for GWB, and an occasional Hannity.
TV’s completely useless, as far as I’m concerned.
As long as I’ve got my blogs, talkradio, and my Gameboy, I don’t need anything else!
James
See Little Green Footballs for reports of Google’s political idiot-syncrasies.
I did not use her name at my blog. My title included the phrase “runaway bride.” I also included a photo. I did receive at least one google hit from someone looking for “photos” of “the runaway bride.”
Evon – #24:
I provide two LGF/Google links at my blog today. Click on my name
Check out my page on Corey Clark the loser. If the domain doesn’t work then you can try this:
http://www.webspawner.com/users/coreyclarksucks/index.html
LaShawn,
I read this post on the day you posted it. Thought it was a great idea. Now I’m back because I was searching for the transcript of the Paula Abdul conversation on technorati, and I guess I forgot about the experiment.
Anyway, I’m laughing at myself right now. (And no, I’m too ashamed to admit why I was looking for the transcript.)
I found it interesting that Paula Abdul seemed to be a little under the weather during the American Idol tonight 5/10/05. She was slurring her words.
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