MyNewPlace Blog

Well, there was much excitement at MyNewPlace this week. Not only did we announce yesterday that we had become the 16^th largest real estate site, but our favorite show, MTV's The Hills, is back on the air.

It is not so much that we enjoy viewing panoramic shots of the general Los Angeles area, punctuated by contrived drivel between egocentric socialites, although that does seem extraordinarily riveting. Instead, we get excited because of all the organic traffic it drives to our site.

Organic Clicks for “hillside villas"

We first noticed this trend last April, when organic clicks for the property Hillside Villas were anomalously high. We traced the property back to the TV show and then did some mildly in depth coverage on how The Hills drove organic traffic when it aired.

This season, however, is different. The girls from the show don't even live at the Hillside Villas anymore. We had reasoned before that since the show displays the name of the location where each scene takes place, that the show's viewers, who have a tendency to be on their computers while watching television, had simply seen the name, googled it, and clicked on our property listing page for Hillside Villas, for which we ranked highly.

Now, however, we have no such causal link to explain what has spiked traffic. At first, it was nice to be able to discern the actual human action behind an organic click on our site, but now we just have to assume that people want to move in because the girls moved out.

Perhaps there is indeed a vacancy at Hillside Villas. Would you want to live in apartments for rent that were recently vacated by celebrities?

Not so fast. Matt's blog from last week, entitled The Hills Watch: Season 3 Recap announced that our organic traffic has seen better days due to the end of The Hills and the big move from Hillside Villas.

I have two words for you: Justin Bobby. As the leather-clad boyfriend of Audrina has recently been causing a rift between her and LC that even the shower he so desperately needs couldn't wash away.

Will it get bad enough to move from their new home back to the Hillside Villas?

In the meantime, people are still infatuated with Hillside Villas. The property listing on MyNewPlace has now moved from the third to the second spot in Google's search engine results page when searching with “Hillside Villas" as the keywords.

Will there be a big increase in traffic once Season 4 of The Hills airs. I don't know about you but I almost can't wait until the next season to have lingering questions answered.

Will Hillside Villas still remain as popular as ever on our apartment finder?

Will Lauren remain unable to share her BFF's and move into the Hillside Villas solo?

Is Audrina going to continue feeling like the third wheel in her own home or will the direction change?

Well, it's over. MyNewplace's brush with the glitterati has, for the foreseeable future, ended. Not only has the third season of MTV's hit show The Hills, concluded, but the girls have moved out of the “Hillside Villas" apartments. And so we lament, so goes quality television programming, so goes our organic traffic.

As you may know, we have been following the organic traffic of the typed keyword “Hillside Villas" ever since we noticed an anomalous spike in our analytics reports in early April. We quickly learned that our property listing page appeared in spot number three in Google's search engine results page for that keyword.

You can see on the graph below, how the increase of traffic from “Hillside Villas" peaks during the week that the girls move out of their apartment.

Weekly Traffic

Since the show prominently displays the locations of each scene, it was easy to see what was driving all the traffic. Even more interesting, however, was our ability to actually visually connect the spike in traffic to a specific human and computer interaction. It is a rare occurrence that a metrics report allows a picture of how traffic originates.

Episodes and Organic Traffic

In the graph above, the red line documents the number of organic clicks referred to our Hillside Villas property listing page. The green dashed lines indicate the dates that new shows aired on MTV.

Our contention is that the factor most directly driving organic traffic is the fact that until Adriana Patridge, Lauren Conrad and Lo moved out of the Hillside Villas apartments, many scenes took place at that location and therefore, its name was displayed multiple times during the episodes.

This, coupled with the rise in people who watch television while also using their laptops, has led to the fervent ‘googling' of the term, Hillside Villas.

Now, if this is true, our analytics reports also indicate that people are inclined to watch the first and last episode at the time of its airing. However, episodes in the middle of the season, people are inclined to record the show and watch it later at their convenience.

Is our contention accurate? Do you watch television and use your computer simultaneously?

Are you also more likely to watch season premieres and finales live, while recording less notable episodes?
Would you want to find an apartment for rent that had been previously occupied by a Hollywood star?

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.