Panormous Returns!

This much is clear: the people want Panormous.

Blogging is funny stuff, or rather, search engine traffic is funny stuff. Back in December when Pizza Hut made the old new again and launched 'Panormous,' I sampled a bit and blogged on the results in my post triumphantly entitled 'Panormous!'

My blogging's my own business, so it was never my intention, but I attained the Holy Grail of Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the coveted #1 organic ranking on Google for the term 'panormous.'

And my traffic went bananas:

Now, a few months later the value-proposition of Panormous (an enormous amount of dough for a modest amount of dough) remains undiminished and Pizza Hut relaunches the product, my Blog celebrates, reinvigorated with new spikes of traffic.

In web-marketing circles this is something of a coup, a resume builder, a feather in the SEO cap. If only I could recreate this kind of result on a useful keyword, it might not be a fluke and I'd be in business. I could probably cash in on the mere fact that I did it once and the promise of doing it again is worth plenty to the web's legions of arbitrage-minded carpetbaggers.

You've probably realized already that I don't actually sell Panormous or stand much to gain from the preponderance of panormous knowledge seekers hitting up my blog. Yet Google's algorithm, in it's determination of what's important to know in the world, sees my blog as a better resource on Panormous than Pizza Hut itself. In this day and age of omnipresent PR and finely controlled messaging and presentation, maybe Google's seeing through it. Maybe they're right because my stuff isn't marketing, but truth. The real word on Panormous.

Panormous!

I promise to get off the food-related posts as soon as I recover from the body blow of the Pizza Hut Panormous we just put out of its misery. Now my afternoon is shot through with a de-motivating slug of indigestible processed wheat, cheese and mechanically-recollected meat byproduct (aka 'pork topping') and I will get nothing done.

Though Pizza Hut says that this is their 'BIGGEST Pan Pizza Ever!,' we've been down this road before. You youngsters may not recall the Pizza wars of 1993 when Dominos, Pizza Hut and the no-longer relevant Little Caesars squared off in an arms race of escalating pizza megatonnage at low, low prices, but they resulted in such epic creations as Pizza Hut's Bigfoot Pizza (which, at 2 square feet, may be bigger; and yes that is Haley Joel Osment.):



And let's not forget Little Caesar's Big! Big! Cheese Pizza and Bucket of Spaghetti:



Now with the economic downturn creating another ripe environment for preposterous food deals, we're seeing indeed that what is old is new again, and the pizza chains are back at it. Perhaps it was this unexpected chance to revisit my youth that made the Panormous so captivating and prompted today's online order.

As I was eating, I wondered what a terrible job it must be to work in product for Pizza Hut, continually confronted with the sisyphean task of making pizza new and exciting with recycled contrivances like dippable crust, cheese-stuffing and sheer size. At the end of the day its flour, cheese and tomato sauce. Where's the creativity in that?

But then, here I am, the ghost of Panormous past still wafts through the office, that flour, cheese and tomato sauce was consumed and enjoyed with abandon and I'm exactly as satisfied as I anticpated being.