Serendipity is a key component of my workday, I often set-out on an idea for a blog post, but upon surfing through our database of Internet usage often get derailed on to a completely different angle. Such was the case today as I was writing a post (which I will publish next week) about the effect of Wikipedia on news consumption in the US.
I was struck by the appearance of “golden spruce” as the ninth of the most popular search term driving traffic to wikipedia. I keep tabs on searches to Wikipedia, as it’s a great proxy for what people are interested in, and didn’t recall seeing the golden spruce on previous lists (believe it or not, the rest of those terms are completely normal).

Using search term analysis, I can identify the top sites receiving traffic on the term in hopes that this would get me closer to understanding this mystery. The top sites listed below seemed like an odd collection of broadcast television, news and media sites, environmental sites… a quick check of the NBC site revealed no clues as to the reason that NBC.com would be the number one downstream site for the term.

The plot thickened as I examined the breakdown of search engines that were sending traffic on the search term “golden spruce.” Over 97% of all search traffic on the term were originating from Ask.com which seemed very improbable. Of course my next step was to visit Ask.com to search the front page for links, or anything else that might prompt users to query on the Golden Spruce… nothing. Finally I executed the query myself, and discovered as I expected the number one listing for the query was from Wikipedia.
Nothing however explained why Internet users were searching on this term in droves. Everything fell into place, when I searched on the common terms of Ask.com, NBC and “golden spruce,” and presto, the mysery was resolved… my first listing is a cheat page for an online contest run by NBC to promote their new show Treasure Hunt. During the first episode of the online contest,, players are told to go to t”he land of the Golden Spruce.” Given that Treasure Hunt is sponsored by Ask.com, the page provides a link to tha Ask.com search engine. QED
As a sidenote, I went off on a tangent during my wild goose chase. Searching on Amazon I found that a book, The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant was released in the paperback the same week that searches for golden spruce spiked. Could be a coincidence or perhaps a clever product placement by John’s publisher.
Nevertheless, I think this is a great example of the integration of television programming with online content, to benefit not only the show but sponsors of that show.