C-J: Nelson County website ranked one of Louisville area’s top Google 2016 searches

NC GAZETTE / WBRT RADIO
STAFF REPORT

Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016, 2 a.m. — Can you name the local website that is No. 4 in the list of the top trending Google searches in 2016 (so far) in the Louisville area?

The correct answer? The Nelson County Gazette. That’s according to reporter Justin Sayers’ story published by the Louisville Courer-Journal on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016. Sayers’ story was based on information released by Google last week about the top search trends for the calendar year — Jan. 1 to mid-December 2016.

The top trending search term in the Louisville area was “astrodienst,” which refers to a popular astrology website, followed by the terms “Powerball” and “UFC News.” Nelson County Gazette was fourth, followed by “NCAA Tournament” in fifth-place

In addition to search trends, the Google Trends website also allows users to track the top names and news events that are trending in Google searches. As one might expect, the trending searches in 2016 for specific people included president-elect Donald Trump and former presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as three of the top five spots.

Nelson County Gazette Editor Jim Brooks said Wednesday he was pleased to hear of the site’s Google ranking in the Courier-Journal story.

“For more than 11 years, the Gazette has been working to fill a need for news here in Nelson County,” he said. “This has been a good year for the Gazette, we’re expecting to finish the year with record site traffic and an increase of at least 30 percent over last year. Our ongoing partnership with Hometown Radio WBRT has been mutually beneficial. I think it certainly has been a contributing factor in the Gazette’s continued growth.”

WHAT IS GOOGLE TRENDS? Google Trends takes an unbiased sample of Google search data that is categorized and grouped together to allow a measure of interest in a particular search topic in a specific area of the world.

For more about Google Trends, visit the site by clicking here

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