Firstly, let me point out that I am not a Lost fan, I am still yet to sit through an entire episode and as a result was left bewildered this morning at the fact my colleague felt compelled to wake up at the crack of dawn on 24th May (on a Monday of all days) to watch the globally aired last ever episode at 5am – Then sit on a Lost Forum for another few hours.

After partaking in some universal questioning of his sanity, one thing has become clearer as the day has progressed…- I appear to be part of a minority on this one. If search traffic and trends are to be believed that is.

“Lost Forum” – high impact on Google search

‘Lost forum’ has risen to be the 35^th most popular search term in Google by lunch time on Monday, a phenomenal achievement and indicative of the vast online community this series has created over its 6 seasons:

Google trends data indicating search traffic during the past 24 hours (Pacific Daylight Time) for “Lost Forum”

This huge surge in online activity surrounding the last Lost episode is evident throughout Google  – when using Google Trends earlier a persistent theme was apparent in the Hot Searches from the USA.

Five of the ten results displayed here are centred around the Lost finale, even considerably eclipsing the news of a celebrity death. (that of Brittany Murphy’s husband)

A similar scenario occurs in Google Insights, this time concerning UK data, with searches for ‘Lost finale’ rising by a huge 200% today.

How has Google Performed for Lost?

So has Google delivered on this mass surge in Lost related searches, even after some slightly iffy search results recently? Let’s take a look at the Google UK (The Web) results using the first keyword term examined here, ‘Lost forum’:

Google searches for Lost

It appears Google has served the grieving Lost fans well with a 10 out of 10 for relevancy here in the Serps, though a slight slip with www.officiallost.com returning a rather unattractive ‘This account has been suspended” page. Bad luck to them for the biggest day in their history, and no page is available.

The forum www.4815162342.com appears to have been overcome by the surge in traffic today and as a result in temporarily unavailable, though many other returned results, such as www.losttalk.net and darkufo.blogspot.com, offer threads addressing theories, explanations and general counselling following the finale of Lost.

Overall a good job from Google here (if not so much the returned sites in some cases), allowing a global nation of Lost fans to mourn as one as yet another long-running series goes to the great box set in the sky.

Lost – Long Term positions in Google

P.s. To see who else has been benefitting from this traffic surge results from January 1^st to the present (24/5/10) are illustrated below for the term ‘Lost’:

Article By Kim Shepherd