Saturday, January 16, 2016

'Bout Those Bots


A wonderful learning opportunity has, at last, come to a close, and I am now gladly back at home. This past week has been a valuable time to expand upon research skills, and I'm so primed to get back to work, putting these newly-acquired skills to good use.

While I was out, however, a different development was unfolding. It seems I have become all the rage among genealogy blog readers in Russia.

What, you say? Do I have Russian ancestry?

Hardly. That, in essence, is the instigation behind my arched eyebrows.

It seems, during this past week, that the numbers of people reading A Family Tapestry has skyrocketed—at least among those situated in Russia. I realize that any blogger will experience stray hits from other nations, but I suspect these are normally search engines crawling the web to keep their inventory of what's available up to date.

When it comes to seeing more people from Russia "reading" my blog than those who claim the same home country as I do, well, something is amiss.

It would be nice to know for sure how many people are taking a fancy to A Family Tapestry, but unfortunately, a popularity like this obliterates such a chance. Who knows how many people are actually reading, and how many are not even people, at all.

Let's just say this is not a challenge I'm going to be tackling anytime soon. Hopefully, Google will catch up with this latest (presumed) 'bot visitor and slam it into spammer jail.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you, Jacqi, for this post. I have many views from Russia and have wondered the same thing.

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    1. Margie, I suspect we are not alone. Eventually, the tech people at Blogger will isolate the offender, block all those hits, our numbers will plummet, and we'll wonder where all our "readers" went--until we realize they weren't readers, after all.

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  2. There's always a party-crasher ruining it for everybody.

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  3. I don't pay much attention...I suppose I should:) Perhaps you have become famous in Russia:)

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    1. Though I've just gone through a spell where I have more "readers" in Russia than in the United States, I doubt it.

      Who knows...perhaps you are as famous in Russia as I am ;)

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  4. I might be a cynic - but I suspect they are looking for email addresses to send spam to - and/or accounts to hack into...

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    1. Very possibly, Iggy. I wouldn't call you a cynic for that point...more like a realist!

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