I don’t think we need conspiracy theories to figure out how YNH got its viewership. It simply got trackbacks from other, more popular blogs.

I found them when wordpress automatically recommended one of my posts under one of their first posts which prompted someone to click through to my blog and they showed up as a referrer. So, yeah, write about the right topics and you will draw the related bloggers’ attention.

A number of those I wondered whether they are sock puppets have names that are hard to search, similar to Polly-O!. Though of course, that’s not a bad strategy for pseudonymity either if you really desire it.

Out of curiosity, I did a quick Google search, which revealed mostly that Polly-O! is nearly searchproof because the engine thinks she’s a brand of string cheese. Additional problems arise from more recent posts being given priority over later ones. Polly-O!’s own reply at YNH isn’t definitive, since “bad monkey” could have been posting under any number of pseudonyms — if what he says is true. Looks like the jury is still out, unless he himself can link to an example (or someone with more time and patience than I have can find one).

Kind of interesting, but at YNH, Polly-O! doesn’t seem to know who Bad Monkey is or what other blog they both commented on. I suppose it could just be as simple as switching pseudonym, or something.