After my post yesterday afternoon about Wild Hop Lager, Anheuser-Busch’s new foray into craft beer, I felt pretty good about being able to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. But I also admit I wondered if they would be any reaction from Goliath. After all, another beer blog, Thom’s Beer Blog, was visited by A-B less than two weeks ago, so I knew they were at least monitoring the blogosphere.
This morning I got my answer. I was visited four times in less than an hour beginning around 8:40. The first visit was at least nineteen minutes but one visit lasted at least forty-five minutes. I say at least, because the way my site meter figures how long a visitor stayed at a site has to do with the space in between the arrival and clicking the first link. They can’t tell how long a visit takes place if they only visit one page and then leave. But the total of their four visits is at least longer than an hour. No comment was left, but it will be interesting to see if I get any further contact or more direct contact from them. I have not had many flattering things to say about them lately, but I also can’t imagine the rantings of one insignificant beer writer would cause them any discomfort. Of course, I like that old journalist’s maxim that the media’s job is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It should be interesting to see if anything happens next.
Here’s the screen capture of the long visit. Notice the name of their browser is a “brew browser.” I like that.
UPDATE (Mar. 24; 11:53): I got my fifth visit just before noon, but I think this is unrelated to the morning visits because they found me by searching Google’s Blogsearch. Because this is so new, my post is actually the only hit you get when you search for “wild hop lager.” I guess that would be the definition of a scoop. Cool.
UPDATE (Mar. 24; 13:32): Visit number six turned personal, with someone from the company reading my biography and my goals for the blog. So either I’m being paranoid, or A-B is trying to learn more about me for … well, that’s the troubling bit, isn’t it?
UPDATE (Mar. 27; 13:25): Visit number seven was a short one and, so far, the only one after the weekend.
UPDATE (Mar. 28): Visit numbers eight and nine were both short, and as far as I can tell at least one of them was unrelated.
UPDATE (Mar. 29): Visit numbers ten through fourteen were throughout the day.
UPDATE (Mar. 30): Six more vists today, fifteen through twenty, inlcluding one for half an hour.
UPDATE (Mar. 31): Three more vists this morning, numbers twenty-one, twenty-two and twenty-three.
UPDATE (Apr. 3): Visit number twenty-four looked at 19 pages in 8 minutes.
UPDATE (Apr. 4): Visit number twenty-five was the only one today.
UPDATE (Apr. 5): Visit number twenty-six was this morning and twenty-seven this afternoon.