Starting yesterday afternoon and continuing to this moment, Logos con Carne’s page view stats have exploded far beyond anything I’ve seen here in the thirteen years of this blog:
I’m pretty sure this is due to an automated process, not a sudden popularity. The number of visitors is roughly normal, even a little low today, so it’s one entity “reading” all those posts, and the click rate seems too fast for it to be someone actually reading the posts.
And, of course, no Likes or Comments, so I have no clue WTF is going on.
Anyone else seeing a huge uptick in stats? I’m a little freaked out about it. I’m not one to be paranoid, but could this have anything to do with the recent election? The only reasonable theory I have is that someone is training a pet LLM and picked my blog for source text. (Clearly because of the superior writing therein. 😏)
Many of us left field bloggers fantasize about popularity, but — after some initial excitement — this obviously isn’t that. But what is it?
Anyone else seeing this? (I just made that image, but as I go to click [Publish] the count is up to 4,715 and growing with every refresh.)
Stay low-key, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Logos con carne 
November 20th, 2024 at 2:11 pm
4,725… 😵
November 20th, 2024 at 3:32 pm
5,079…
November 20th, 2024 at 6:38 pm
6077…
November 21st, 2024 at 8:58 am
Yesterday topped out at 7,581 (for a total of 10,064 including Tuesday evening).
Today, views are already up to 2,098 (for a total of 12,162).
Contacted WordPress Service, but their reply wasn’t helpful.
November 20th, 2024 at 2:34 pm
if LLMs are training on your website content, I look forward to a small uptick in their performance
November 20th, 2024 at 3:28 pm
You are too kind! 😊
November 20th, 2024 at 2:59 pm
You of all people will figure it out.
November 20th, 2024 at 3:29 pm
Such faith!
November 20th, 2024 at 3:16 pm
Happens to me, too. I looked into it with a WordPress wizard- likely is spam bots. There are measures one can take; but it got too technical for me.
November 20th, 2024 at 3:32 pm
Interesting. That would certainly explain it. Why would a spambot be interested in reading posts, though? There’s nothing in my SPAM queue. My Admin page says Akismet (the SPAM filter) has blocked 424,499 spam comments. I believe that’s over the 13 years of the blog. I’ll keep an eye on that to see if it jumps. Weird.
November 20th, 2024 at 7:27 pm
Whoa! That’s pretty wild! I hope you can figure it out and share when you discover the story behind these numbers.
November 20th, 2024 at 8:02 pm
Yeah, it’s nuts. I contacted WP “happiness” engineers. They didn’t respond to chat, hopefully they’ll get back to me via email. (It’s over 6,500 now.)
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