The other day I was feeling pretty good about myself. Admittedly that is a common occurrence as I'm almost as self-confident as our Fearless Leader, who has plenary power according to Mike Pence. Being a former altar boy myself I know that when Pence uses the word "plenary" he's calling on his Baltimore Catechism education to define "plenary" as absolute and unqualified.
What caused me to trip the light narcissistic was the ever growing number of hits on my old stories.
Then an disturbing thought crossed my mind.
How many of those hits are actually bots?
Is it possible that each story is being crawled by Google at least once a day?
Are hits unique? Are hits adjusted for bots?
Does anyone care other than those of us whose egocentricity has grown faster than our waistline during shelter in place?
Jill
Comments
A Bot That
Hits by bots are only a very minor part of the count of hits on stories. Most bots announce themselves as being bots and the system ignores them for the purpose of counting hits. The few ill-behaved bots are often blocked from visiting the site in the first place.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Ah... the Mighty Google
that's why my own blog has a 'robots.txt' that specifically blocks Google.
Starve them of data is our only weapon.
It does mean that if you search for my stories then this site is shown and not my blog.
Samantha
Starve them of data
Great idea. I too starve Google. I've switched my default search engine to Duck Duck Go. They don't sell your information to advertisers like Google does, so I don't have adds for things I've search for following me around the web.
The only Google that I'm still using is Google Maps.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Some sunlight for you.
In these trying times, I hope to shed a little sunshine for you. I have been reading your older stories like crazy. It is something to do and breaks the boredom and lessen the depression. I would not be a bit surprised to find that I may not be only one that is doing that. Your writing is fantastic and always worth reading.
Well Bobbie Sue
Aren't you the sweetest thing. I read my old stories like crazy, too. I do everything like crazy. Crazy is as crazy does.
Thank you for the compliment.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Bot?
Would you believe that I first thought our "Fearless Leader" refered to Erin? I realized once you mentioned Mike Pence.
I've wondered about the growing number of hits on "John's Living Nightmare". Approaching 13000, and an order of magnitude greater than my recent posts. Granted, its kudo numbers have shot out in front of my 2nd-tier kudo stories -- still nowhere near my top (1st-tier) kudo levels -- and nowhere near proportional to the hits.
-- Daphne Xu
Ego food
I don't want to feed your ego's voracious appetite but fear this will.
I am of the opinion that you have probably earned most of the added hits and kudos. You have had stories on the front page. This gets even lowly writers like me hits on old stories. In addition, you have earned a reputation as a good writer, which probably gets a few to look at your old stories, when trying to fill time from virus dodging.
Remind your ego that you need to add a buck to all the hits and kudos to get a cup of coffee.
Cheryl
Ego
There are too many mirrors in my house to allow my ego to get the best of me.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
No bots about it?
Love, Andrea Lena