Dallas vs. Fort Worth

This is a totally D/FW centric blogging, so read no further if anything D/FW centric vexes you.

So, it's been my observation during my time here that there is a weird one-sided rivalry that has gone on for years, with many Fort Worthers feeling like their town is overshadowed by Dallas. Because, well, Fort Worth is overshadowed by Dallas.

You often hear odd remarks about Dallas coming out of Fort Worther's mouths, as if Dallas is some sort of evil place best avoided. I documented some of this some time ago. You can read that here. Some of it is pretty amusing.

Well. Yesterday I came upon something interesting that likely will vex those Fort Worthers who are Dallas obsessed.

On my Eyes on Texas website I have a page about the Fort Worth Stockyards. It is usually my 4th or 5th most visited webpage. I've long known it Googles well, as in, usually somewhere in the top 5, when someone searches for "Fort Worth Stockyards."

I was checking on my webstats. I get a list of what search strings people are using that have them ending up on my website. I'd noticed before, but thought nothing of it, that one of the top search strings is "Dallas Stockyards."

Fort Worth Stockyards does not show up on my top 20 list of search strings.

So. I Googled "Dallas Stockyards" and what do my surprised eyes see? My webpage Googles #1. Then I noticed the number of results for the Dallas Stockyards search was 379,000.

I then Googled "Fort Worth Stockyards" and found that search string brought up only 122,000 results with my Fort Worth Stockyards webpage being #4.

I don't really know what to conclude about this except that it would seem a lot of people associate Forth Worth's actual one and only unique thing, that being the Stockyards, with Dallas.

For a variety of reasons, some notorious, Dallas is imprinted on the world's consciousness. The Dallas skyline is iconic, recognized all over the world, due to a TV show's opening credits and that show for a long period of time being the world's most popular TV show. Nothing about Fort Worth is recognized all over the world, or even the majority of the nation.

The only thing in Fort Worth that even remotely might be considered iconic, that might be recognized by some people in the rest of the nation, is the Fort Worth Stockyards sign above Exchange Avenue.

It's sort of sad that apparently a lot of people associate Fort Worth's only possible iconic image with Dallas and Google for info about it because they think they want to visit the Dallas Stockyards.