Newtown based travel blogger success after World Cup game

Wales’s World Cup exploits caused a meltdown on a Powys travel blogger’s website – with confused Americans asking if Wales is a country.

Kieren Windsor, who launched Wales Guidebook over the summer saw a 581% surge in traffic to his site after Wales kicked off their campaign against the USA.

The 30-year-old has now had to undergo a hasty upgrade to stop his website from crashing after his article, ‘Is Wales a country?’ quickly picked up traction from Yanks who took to Google for research.

Top enquiries have been What language do they speak in Wales? Is Wales England? Is Wales good at soccer? Where is Wales? How is Wales a Country?

And one US TV show went berserk following the country’s failure to beat Wales on Monday

It seems internet surfers found a lot of answers on Kieren’s blog, which provides a quirky but comprehensive guide to the Land of His Fathers and aims to turn up the gems hidden among the best-known holiday hotspots.

Kieren, 30, a business and marketing graduate from Newtown in Powys, said:

“Typically, the people who read my blog are those from other parts of the UK looking to plan a trip to Wales or Welsh people visiting other parts of their country.

“However, this last week has seen a surge in readers from the United States with almost 75% of those reading my ‘Is Wales a Country’ article being Americans.

“I wrote the article when I launched the website over summer but suddenly it’s the most read article on my site by a mile as people are finding it through Google search.

“Even since the match against America, traffic is continuing to rise. Even the city of Wales, in Alaska, the most westerly city in the USA, population 152, has had a huge spike in interest this week.”

Kieren, whose mission is to promote Wales as a travel destination, started a backpacking travel blog as a hobby but saw it morph into a full time business in the space of five years after learning about the role of influencers during his employment.

He said his write-up reached 581% more readers over the last seven days compared to the previous week as Wales competed in the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 64 years.