The Internet's Insatiable Interest in Freshman Beanie Caps

In the last couple of days, I've been thinking a lot about why my article about Concordia College's freshman beanie caps has received more than a quarter of a million page views during the past six years.

During the past week (May  27 - June 4) my blog has received 1,144 page views, of which 475 (42%) were on my beanie article.

Did some computer programmer create an application with an endless loop that visits that webpage almost a hundred times a day?

Is my article being used, without my knowledge, as part of some international spam operation?

One simple possibility is that a surprisingly enormous number of people search the Internet for articles about freshman beanie caps. I did a Google search for "freshman beanie caps", and I found that my article was listed as #30. In other words, there are 29 webpages about freshman beanie caps that get even more page views than my article gets.

Perhaps collecting vintage beanie caps is a big business.

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UPDATE (July 19): My brother Peter is a computer expert, and he suggested that the beanie article gets a lot of page views because it includes a photograph of black-and-white saddle shoes. Very few people care about beanie caps, but lots of women still search the Internet for information about saddle shoes. I think Peter's suggestion is the explanation.

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During that same week, my blog received page views from the following countries:

USA = 327

France = 136

Germany = 108

Belgium = 98

United Kingdom = 52

Russia = 33

Czech Republic = 15

Australia = 9

Greece = 9

Thailand = 9

Since those numbers add up to 787, there must have been a lot of countries, with numbers less than 9, that Blogger did not list in order for the grand total to be 1,144. (Or else Blogger cannot identify the country of origin for many page views.)

Blogger does not tell me which particular countries accounted for the page views specifically on my beanie article.

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My articles that received the most page views in the last week:

Concordia College Freshman Beanie Caps = 475

Campus Buildings That Are Gone = 84

The Trampoline in St John's Basement = 43

Reinhold Marxhausen's Sound-Making Sculptures = 28

The Meaning of the Movie "Footloose" = 19

Pledging Allegiance to the Christian Flag = 15

The Meaning of the Movie "Doubt" = 11

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My two articles explaining movies have received a lot of total page views:

The Meaning of the Movie "Doubt" = 1,268  total page views

The Meaning of the Movie "Footloose" = 1,027 total page views

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I have another blog devoted entirely to the movie Dirty Dancing. The last time I posted an article on that blog was in January 2009. During the past month, that blog averaged about 56 page views a day.

In its entire existence, that blog has received 63,884 page views.

The blog's most viewed article, Robbie Gould's Philosophy, has received 11,640 page views.