Is Your Blog on CNN’s home page? Mine is
by Matt on Apr 26, 2010 in Promotion
If you go to CNN.com right now, wait for the page to load (wow, it’s slow), and then use the LOCAL NEWS & WEATHER widget on the right side, you can see a couple links to one of our local blogs. Just put in our local zip code and here’s what you’ll see:
I don’t know who or what WIVB is, but the other two links there both point to the West Richland Real Estate blog, one of the four that my wife and I write.
How on Earth Did That Happen?
What you’re looking at is one of the initial integrations of Outside.in’s partnership with CNN, which dates back to December when CNN sank some money into Outside.in.
Peter Krasilovsky reports that Outside.in content is also showing up now on CNN’s weather page and on user profile pages, too. I see the Outside.in headlines on the weather page, but they’re not nearly as targeted/accurate as the screenshot above. On the weather page, the “local” headlines below the West Richland weather mostly come from Seattle sources (with one from Kansas City, too).
How do I get my local blog on CNN, too?
Pretty simple: Submit your site to Outside.in for Bloggers, which was formerly known as the Outside.in GeoToolkit.
By the way, there’s no SEO value from these links; they first pass through the Outside.in API, then through your feed URL, and then to your blog. But CNN is (obviously) a hugely popular site, so I’ll be watching to see if there’s any traffic increase in the coming days and weeks.
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10 Responses to “Is Your Blog on CNN’s home page? Mine is”
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You know Matt, I’ve also been getting traffic from CNN and could not figure it out. I just typed my zip code into the widget and one of my local stories popped up as the second story about a local doctor. Thanks for solving that mystery for me.
I noticed a link from CNN the other day and couldn’t figure out why as well. Nothing came up from my site for my zip code when I just tried though.
No wonder! I’ve been wondering why these Cnn.com referrals have been coming in.
How’s the CT, Matt?
Matt, thanks so much for sharing our integration with your readers. I noticed that you’re missing an end ” in your first link, which is stripping out part of your second paragraph.
Also, our API redirect is a 301, which should pass on SEO juice.
@Dustin: The headlines update throughout the day as new stories come in, so your stories may have been out of rotation when you checked.
Lauren Sperber
Outside.in Product Manager
Thx for catching that, Lauren — that’s what happens when I blog at midnight.
Should be all fixed now and the full article readable.
Interesting on the API 301. I’ll watch that. I don’t think the engines will always follow two jumps like that, 301 or not. But worth keeping an eye on.
@Justin — don’t know, will be watching stats in the days/weeks to come for sure.
Glad to help! There will only be two jumps if you’re using feedburner or something similar that rewrites your permalink URLs–but you’re completely right that most savvy bloggers are using feedburner. I googled up a guide to turning off the feedburner links: http://www.shankrila.com/tech-stuff/blogging-tip-turn-off-feedburner-redirect-in-rss-feeds/
We’ll be really interested to hear bloggers’ feedback on this implementation. Let us know what you see as you keep an eye on your stats.
This is a great post, and a great catch, Matt. Thanks!
[...] traffic both from our core site and from our ecosystem. “I saw the referrals coming over from CNN and that was really exciting. We like what you do to support the hyperlocal blogging community and [...]
[...] outside.in I’ve written about outside.in many times before, so this is probably not new to anyone. In a nutshell, you can add your blog into outside.in’s system to increase exposure. Your blog posts will show up on outside.in itself, and may show up on its partners’ sites, like local media outlets and even CNN. [...]