The Dead Zone

If you pay any attention to web analytics, you're well aware that Internet traffic begins to drop off around Thanksgiving. Sure, you have your cyber Monday shoppers (not to mention your last-minute-can-you-send-that-express shoppers) along with all those happy bloggers posting photographs of their adorable grandchildren's first Christmas, their cats wearing festive hats, their great-aunt Tildy's gingerbread recipe, and all the snow from which they just dug out their car, but by and large, after Thanksgiving, most of us are too busy getting ready for the end of December to kill fifteen minutes online.

Of course, the deadest of the dead time is...this week. Students are still enjoying quality time with their families before they head back to school for the new semester. Young couples are still enjoying fabulous tropical vacations without a care in the world. A lot of us are off work, and don't need the distraction of the Internet to fill up our otherwise meaningless work days, and those of us who do have to work this week, well, those folks are working. Mostly taking care of the rest of us.

So blogging the last week of December hardly seems worth it. But then again, if you know anything about web analytics, you're well aware that Google doesn't go on vacation. Google's working as hard as ever, crawling your pages and ranking them. Google has no family to go home to. Google doesn't take a break, and if you want Google to notice you, you can't take a break either.