Out SEOing The NYTimes.com

If you’re an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, here’s some interesting data for you to play with…

Christine Mohan, my friend and co-worker, emailed me 11/26 morning – “NYT: Indian manhole covers. Front page story today.” Christine knew I had blogged about NYC manhole covers a few months ago, just for fun.  It’s been little under a week since J. Adam Huggins of The New York Times covered the story, and nicely packaged it with a must-watch audio slideshow. And for the entire week since the story appeared in NYT, Google Search has been sending a good chunk of traffic to my blog. I’ve WP-Stats and Google Analytics installed on my blog, and out of curiousity I ran a Google Search test on the entrance keywords. (Note: Google constantly tweaks its search results algorithm, so these findings will certainly change over time).

manholes made in india (#1 NYT, #2 AdosPados)

made in india sewer (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

n.y.c sewer india (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

ny sewer made india (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

nyc sewer made in india (#1 NYT, #2 AdosPados)

How to say “I’m going to stab you in the gut” in Indian?

Stephen Colbert picked up a story by LA Times – one of the world’s 7,000 distinct languages disappears every 14 days, an extinction rate exceeding that of birds, mammals or plants. At least 20% of the world’s languages are in imminent danger of becoming extinct as their last speakers die off, compared with about 18% of mammals, 8% of plants and 5% of birds.

One such language facing extinction is Sora, spoken by 288,000 natives in South Orissa in eastern India. More information here on the Living Toungues. The Sora language is unique in that entire sentences maybe expressed by one word. David Harrison, the guest on Colbert Report show, borrows a word from Sora to prove his point – phu-phoon-kun-tam, which in English translates to “I’m going to stab you in the gut”.

Who says you don’t learn anything from Comedy shows? Watch the video clip here, very funny! I only wish Comedy Central didn’t screw up in writing the description text for the video. India has 22 official languages and hundreds of regional languages and dialects, but none called “Indian”.

World’s Most Visited Building

File this in the “Did You Know?” category, or rather “hmm… I never knew that” category. I stumbled upon “1000 places to see before you die” on Discovery Channel this weekend. They were featuring North India.

Apparently, the Bahai Temple in New Delhi is the most visited building in the world. On an average, 10,000 visit the “lotus” temple everyday.

The photo is from my visit to the Lotus temple back in 1997. More on the Bahai House of worship here and the New Delhi Bahai temple architecture here.

Another Indian architecture trivia from the same program – the Qutub Minar is the highest brick minaret in the world. This from the Wikipedia entry – the Qutub Minar is 72.5 metres high (237.8 ft) and requires 399 steps to get to the top. I went to school in New Delhi for 3 years and my school bus used to drive by the Qutub Minar everday.

The tall iron structure next to it has an history of its own. This from the Wikipedia entry – made up of 98% wrought iron of pure quality, it is 7.21m (23 feet 8 inches) high, with 93cm buried below the present floor level, and has a diameter of 41cm (16 inches) at the bottom which tapers down on going up. The pillar was manufactured by forge welding and the temperatures required to form such of pillar by forge welding can be achieved by combustion of coal. The pillar is a testament to the high level of skill achieved by ancient Indian iron smiths in the extraction and processing of iron.

Majority of NYC sewer manhole covers “Made in India”

For all those proud New Yorkers that claim to know every bit about the city history, I can almost guarantee a good bar conversation. Here’s how it usually goes:

Q: How many years have you lived in the city?

A: Over 5 years

Q: How many miles do you walk each day?

A: About a mile or two

Q: Did you know a majority of NYC sewer manhole covers are imported from India?

A: No way! You’ve gotta be kidding me! Did this just happen?

Most of New York City’s 600,000 manhole covers and the many hundreds of thousands all over the US come from India. And foundries in and around Kolkata claim a big chunk of that business. Indian companies began supplying manhole and sewer access covers to the US almost four decades ago. But in recent times their business has gone up manifold as they charge only a third of what US makers demand for the same work.

Read more here and here.