MyNewPlace Blog

Oh my god, we were totally right about the keyword “Hillside Villas" going through the roof yesterday! I mean, it was so obvious that it was going to happen. You would have to live in a cave under a rock at the bottom of the Mariana Trench to not see it coming. Or the valley. ZING!

So, we made the prediction last week that following Monday night's new episode of The Hills, MyNewPlace would again be hit by a wave of Google searches for the super trendy apartment of Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge, the Hillside Villas. Oh and Earth to me, if you are going to write about the Hills, make sure you've got your facts straight, her name is Audrina, not Adriana Patridge.

Look at the graph below, it has more crazy ups and downs than Scott Baio's career:

Keyword Search Traffic

Last Monday night's episode was particularly entertaining as the situation between Lauren and Audrina and the new BF, Justin Bobby unfolded. The situation is later escalated when Lauren begins discussing her roommates with Lo. So when Audrina eventually joins them, Lauren brings up renewing their lease at Hillside Villas. Lauren hinted at looking for a new apartment for rent. As if the situation couldn't become any more awkward it does when Audrina indecisively says she would be interested in moving into the house if welcomed.

Are viewers looking to possible move in with Lauren if Audrina moves out or if their Hillside Villas apartment becomes available?

Until next Monday's show the theme song had it right in saying “the rest is still “Unwritten“

Recently, MyNewPlace noticed that a new keyword, “Hillside Villas" had popped up on our analytics report and had been driving a noticeable amount of organic traffic to our detailed rental listing page that featured that property. “Hillside Villas" was, by far, the most searched of all rental property specific keywords.

It took us about one Google search for “Hillside Villas" to figure out what was driving all the traffic. Apparently, that apartment complex is home to Lauren Conrad and Adriana Partridge, stars of MTV's popular Los Angeles based show The Hills.

Since the show reveals the actual location of where each scene takes place, restaurants, bars and apartment buildings, get a lot of (free?) publicity. Thus, when a scene occurs at Lauren and Adriana's apartment, “Hillside Villas" is displayed at the bottom of the screen. We believe this to be directly responsible for the recent upsurge in organic traffic.

Traffic from typed-Keyword phrase “Hillside Villas"

It is not very often that one is able to actually visualize the connection between people at home in front of their computers and how that directly leads to patterns in a search traffic report.

We can tell when episodes are, without even consulting the TV Guide. From the graph, it appears that the season started on Monday, March 24^th, that new episodes air on Monday nights and that there have been 5 new episodes. When we checked our facts at TV.com, there had, in fact, been 7 shows, but all had indeed aired on dates where traffic spiked on our Keyword Phrase Line Graph.

We are confidently predicting that Monday night and Tuesday morning we will again see a barrage of hits on our Hillside Villas detailed listing page.

Stay tuned in to our ongoing “Hills Watch" as we make predictions on traffic volume based on how the show unfolds. Will an increase of drama on the show discourage potential neighbors from looking for an apartment for rent at the Hillside Villas and therefore slacken traffic? If more stars from the show move in, will “Hillside Villas" searches go through the roof?

Only time and analytics reports will tell.