One interesting item about vanishing for a couple of weeks is that I've had a chance to look at what the blog's stats look like with the blog in a steady state.
And I'll let it be said now that the number of real reads --or those that I consider actual, live people reading content-- runs around 25-75 people per average blog entry. Sure, there's the occasional spike of interest if someone from a far more populous site links to a post*, but given that I've never tried to promote the blog in any real way**, a steady readership of 25-75 isn't too bad.
The bot traffic, however, can be almost bizarre at times.
As of this moment, PC has had about 945 pageviews this past seven days, and almost all of them were bot or spam related. Quite a few of them are search bots that go through every single page on PC, but there are quite a few bizarre sources in the list.
I'm not going to post them here, per se, because I don't want to somehow summon more of them via speaking their name like Voldemort, but when you see pageviews coming from places such as Dermatology Times, you know that something weird is going on. I've actually clicked on a few that looked at first blush like legitimate blogs with Wordpress or Blogger URLs, but then you find out that those blogs (if they ever existed) had long since been taken over by hackers.
Then there are the ones, that while they are legitimate sites, you don't typically expect to show up in a referral list for Parallel Context. Such as the UK website for Elle. Or an Intel software website. Or a blog about the Great American Songbook.
Once in a while, an old post catches new life and shows up in the weekly stats. The Two Sides of a Coin series --about the similarities between Blood Elves and Draenei-- that I did back in 2011 periodically makes an appearance, as does the 2010 post about how I was mistaken for a female player during a run of Magister's Terrace in I Think I Misplaced my Ovaries. And Soul's 2010 post about How to Effectively Tank the Lich King was a favorite long after Cataclysm dropped.***
But for the post part, PC never developed into a hot blog that people had to read to keep up with their latest MMO fix. And I'm fine with that, because MMOs aren't the "it" thing right now anyway.
So if you don't mind me, I'll hang around with my friends, the bots, and open a beer while waiting for SWTOR to load. I think I need to get an Athiss run before I go to bed.
*The single greatest spike in readership for an individual post came from a link from WoW Insider, back when a) they existed as WoW Insider, and b) when they used to highlight interesting posts from the blogosphere. Both of those days are long past. Even then, the spike was about 1300 users in December 2011 for Part 2 of my Two Sides to a Coin series. I've a cousin who wrote for a site that deals with eSports and console games, and they frequently get that many visitors per hour.
**As I've mentioned way too many times on PC to count, I've never signed up for Twitter, and I don't promote the blog via Facebook or Google+. I've likened this as my way of shouting into the wind without much worry about causing a hurricane a half a world away.
***It once showed up on the front page of Google search results for "tanking the Lich King". Soul was very proud of that.
EtA: Corrected a couple of grammatical errors.
And I'll let it be said now that the number of real reads --or those that I consider actual, live people reading content-- runs around 25-75 people per average blog entry. Sure, there's the occasional spike of interest if someone from a far more populous site links to a post*, but given that I've never tried to promote the blog in any real way**, a steady readership of 25-75 isn't too bad.
The bot traffic, however, can be almost bizarre at times.
 |
| It has to be due to all of those Walking Bombs in Gnomeregan. Those things used to give me nightmares. From WoW-Wiki. |
As of this moment, PC has had about 945 pageviews this past seven days, and almost all of them were bot or spam related. Quite a few of them are search bots that go through every single page on PC, but there are quite a few bizarre sources in the list.
I'm not going to post them here, per se, because I don't want to somehow summon more of them via speaking their name like Voldemort, but when you see pageviews coming from places such as Dermatology Times, you know that something weird is going on. I've actually clicked on a few that looked at first blush like legitimate blogs with Wordpress or Blogger URLs, but then you find out that those blogs (if they ever existed) had long since been taken over by hackers.
Then there are the ones, that while they are legitimate sites, you don't typically expect to show up in a referral list for Parallel Context. Such as the UK website for Elle. Or an Intel software website. Or a blog about the Great American Songbook.
***
Once in a while, an old post catches new life and shows up in the weekly stats. The Two Sides of a Coin series --about the similarities between Blood Elves and Draenei-- that I did back in 2011 periodically makes an appearance, as does the 2010 post about how I was mistaken for a female player during a run of Magister's Terrace in I Think I Misplaced my Ovaries. And Soul's 2010 post about How to Effectively Tank the Lich King was a favorite long after Cataclysm dropped.***
But for the post part, PC never developed into a hot blog that people had to read to keep up with their latest MMO fix. And I'm fine with that, because MMOs aren't the "it" thing right now anyway.
So if you don't mind me, I'll hang around with my friends, the bots, and open a beer while waiting for SWTOR to load. I think I need to get an Athiss run before I go to bed.
 |
| This place never gets old. Neither does WoW's Halls of Lightning. From swtor-wikia.com. |
*The single greatest spike in readership for an individual post came from a link from WoW Insider, back when a) they existed as WoW Insider, and b) when they used to highlight interesting posts from the blogosphere. Both of those days are long past. Even then, the spike was about 1300 users in December 2011 for Part 2 of my Two Sides to a Coin series. I've a cousin who wrote for a site that deals with eSports and console games, and they frequently get that many visitors per hour.
**As I've mentioned way too many times on PC to count, I've never signed up for Twitter, and I don't promote the blog via Facebook or Google+. I've likened this as my way of shouting into the wind without much worry about causing a hurricane a half a world away.
***It once showed up on the front page of Google search results for "tanking the Lich King". Soul was very proud of that.
EtA: Corrected a couple of grammatical errors.
The other day I was looking at my stats on Blogger and got excited about it showing referrals from several other Blogspot blogs that I'd never heard about before. Unfortunately they turned out to be dead, unrelated to anything and containing no sign of an actual link to me. White noise indeed.
ReplyDelete(Re-reading that misplaced ovaries post was fun. I'm always surprised to see my own comments because I usually have no memory of writing them.)
I'm actually surprised to see that post has held up so well. I typically cringe when reading old posts, particularly those from the first few years of PC, but that turned out pretty good with quite a bit of commentary.
DeleteThere was also a Tam sighting in the comments section, which made me a bit wistful. I really miss Righteous Orbs at times.