Bots Attack! And throw things out of wack!!!

Pageview numbers are frequently at odds with reality.

The most popular post on this blog is this one:

http://richardgibney.blogspot.ie/2012/06/chapter-one-part-1-of-early-childhood.html

It is the very first chapter of an ongoing, satirical, whimsical, lewd, surreal, parodic blog novel.

It is ten times more popular than the next most popular posts. Some of them are here:

http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/01/10-questions-with-fantasy-author-jl.html
http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2011/11/mcadams-torment-by-audrey-devereux-at.html
http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/04/lynn-lamb-interview-author-of-survivor.html
http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/charles-peterson-sheppards-specialist.html
http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/serina-hartwell-author-of-hidden.html
http://richardgibney.blogspot.com/2016/02/10-questions-with-author-of-dublin.html

All the other popular posts feature OTHER people - either in interview or reviews of their work.

The blog novel is my own work. So what gives? Why is my own work so much more popular - in this one instance - this very first chapter of a daft blog novel, when none of the other chapters even breach the top 10 or so - than other stuff?



The source of the interest appears to be lots of hits from Palo Alto California a few years ago, and then from places like Ukraine and Russia more recently. This has driven up the pageviews on specific posts to astounding levels. What is in Palo Alto, Californ-eeee-aye-ay? Google has a big presence there. So Google has done whatever it does to my blog so that it's searchable or indexed or whatever else. This is good news. But it throws the metrics out - we cannot rely on Google's own estimates (via Blogger) of a blog's popularity.

And what have they got in Russia and Ukraine, beyond issues related to territoriality ? Why, they have scammers and spammers! Who knows why they all landed on the first page of my novel like a shower of lewnatics? Do YOU know?

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