It could happen to any person, product or place. Just a few words from Oprah Winfrey and a company can see an influx in sales, a product can become a best-seller, or a place can be “put on the map.” Some call it “The Oprah Effect.”

San Luis Obispo, Calif. is only just beginning to feel it after The Oprah Winfrey show aired on Wednesday featuring San Luis Obispo, as “the happiest city in America.”

The day the episode aired, the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce’s tourism website (VisitSLO.com) saw a 745 percent increase in visits over the same day last year (visits indicates the number of unique sessions initiated by website visitors, according to Google Analytics). The website normally gets about 290 visits per day in the slow winter months, and about 433 visits per day in the summer months when the tourism season occurs. But on Wednesday, VisitSLO.com had 2,443 visits.

“We knew we would see a spike in traffic on our tourism site, but we were so thrilled to see it increase that much,” said Whitney Diaz, director of Internet services and publications at the San Luis Obispo Chamber. “Even traffic the day after the episode aired is extremely high, with more than 1,000 visits midday. We’re hopeful that it won’t taper off any time soon.”

VisitSLO.com is the San Luis Obispo Chamber’s most popular website and targets visitors and locals who are looking for places to stay, dine or have a good time. The website has more than 120,000 visits per year from people all over the world with most of the traffic coming from search engines like Google.

“More and more people are showing an interest in visiting San Luis Obispo and this means great things for businesses,” said Dave Garth, San Luis Obispo Chamber president/CEO. “The Chamber staff works so hard promote San Luis Obispo and boost tourism as an economic development engine, and this an example of how hard work pays off.”

Lindsey Miller, the San Luis Obispo Chamber’s director of marketing, worked with the crew and producers of The Oprah Winfrey Show when they spent a weekend in San Luis Obispo earlier this month to shoot the three-minute segment that aired this week. She helped the show find the best places to film the segment and connected producers with locals that appeared in the episode.

For more than eight months last year, Miller also worked with National Geographic and Dan Buettner, the author of the book that sparked the Oprah show’s interest in San Luis Obispo (“Thrive…Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way”).

To watch the segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show that featured San Luis Obispo, the happiest city in America, visit http://bit.ly/dKjDHU.