Once on the Net, Where Do Your Stories Go? One Writer's Search

Larry Burton (Panama City Beach, Fla.) I wrote a story a few hours ago, went to bed, woke up and like all good authors, went to see if was being "hit." You never know if an article will "take off" or not and many factors come into play: the day of the week, other things going on to distract readers, and so forth.

But it always interests me exactly where my stories wind up. Today I was shocked to find my story "The Science of Alabama's Nick Saban" in some truly unique places. I googled the headline in parentheses so as to only get exact matches and found that in just four hours it had four pages of sites.

One of them was this entertainment website. Now I don't know if this site for movie producer Tim Burton, (who seems to always have a Johnny Depp Movie coming out) thought that Tim wrote this or not, but it was funny to see it on his biography site.

I don't think I'll get many hits from it being there.

Then for some reason, it showed up here, a house-buying site for people looking for a home in Alabama.

You have to wonder why somebody thought this one sports article fit into that category.

That was as strange as finding it on Forkland, Alabama and Choccolocco, Alabama's websites, a small Alabama cities, or that it made the India Times.

I had no idea I had fans in India, but hey, is the Internet ever wrong?

As for media outlets, I always seem to be a favorite of WBIR a television station in Atlanta. I guess I could understand that as there are lots of Bama fans in Atlanta, but for some reason, some television station in Colorado always seem to link my stuff as well.

As for the majors, I was tickled that USA Today picked it up and ran with it but I was surprised to see that it also made the Glasgow, Scotland, edition.

Maybe they put it in the European editions because soccer fans like football too, after all, it aslo made the Big Soccer site.

Then it was at the Boogie Down Enigma, which I'm sure must be a fun site along with dozens of other sites I never heard of.

And that's all in less than eight hours. Once out of curiosity, when a story which got over 25,000 hits on Bleacher Report, I found out it was on 27 pages of Google searches.

So, if you're bored, google your headlines and see where you've been. If we could just get the credit for the air miles it would sure be worth it!