I looked at my dashboard and saw this under “most popular posts”:
Most of these make sense, because I posted them in the past week. The one that doesn’t make sense is the first on the list, this post from 2013. It has the most hits of the past week, and it was written almost seven years ago, about a year after I even started this blog.
I’m sure it’s someone having fun with his or her bot, and if I were to analyze the spam that I delete daily I’d probably see that many of the attempted ads for ED drugs, gym shoes, and porn were destined to be posted in the comments for this post. Which still doesn’t make any sense: why would they be attempting to post their comment spam to seven year old posts that no one (me included) visits anymore?
Maybe I should put a time limit on commenting and see what happens…
I am glad you posted this because even though I take a once in a while gander at my stats, etc., I don’t spend a lot of time trying to analyze. I am going to look at my stats and see if anything seems strange.
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I look at the stats and nothing seems out of the ordinary. On the other hand, I’m not sure I understand what I’m looking at…
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Yes, I feel the same way.
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Can you see where your traffic originates? Sometimes an unusual thing there may point to a culprit.
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It’s the usual USA/Canada/UK/India, all of which makes sense. Interesting thing is that there were no searches listed; a lot of times they’ll lead me to a reason.
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I know you are not a Google fan, but their analytics are often more encompassing.
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I’m still a noob on WP so there is lots I don’t understand still. But over on Blogger I remember getting spikes which it told me were from Israel (lasted a few days) and from Russia (lasted weeks). That last one was a few hundred hits per day, on a particular post (nothing to do with Russia or politics), on a site which normally got a few tens of hits per day, all posts. They appeared in the statistics but never interacted with the blog, never a like or a comment, which made me think it was a bot.
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That’s probably it, though why that post?
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For what it’s worth, my absolute top post is one on restroom vending machines. I guess it hits high in the search engines, but I wish it had more to do with my writing.
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Sounds like an interesting post, anyway. 😉
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I can’t even begin to understand how the stats are compiled here. Good luck with it, John.
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Neither can I. I decided to put a six-month limit on commenting and see what happens. If my spam goes way down, I’ll know the reason.
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Hoping you publish your findings. Right now I don’t get much spam :::knock on wood::: but if it ever starts jacking up…
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Hmmm
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Yeah, go figure.
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?? Curious 💜
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There are some mysteries I think we’re destined never to resolve…
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Yes indeed 💜
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I had a post on I Love Lucy that talked about Ethel and Fred’s real-life relationship that was a year old hit over 2000 views in 2 days. I didn’t know what was going on and found out that someone had posted it on Reddit…I thought it was spam until I saw the Reddit at the bottom of the stats page.
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Nothing out of the ordinary there. I get a lot of referrals through WordPress reader, but that’s normal.
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Yea but when it went up to 2000 in two days I was thinking spam.
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Check your spam box. I find that when someone has gone into an older post, it’s often to leave a spam comment in hopes that I won’t moderate it. Doesn’t quite work that way, LOL.
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I check it daily, and practically none of the spam is coming from that post. Very strange.
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