As the ninth anniversary of starting a blog is coming around, I can safely say that I'm enjoying the process more than ever. It's a handy record of what I've done, what I'm working on, and a few pipe dream projects. I even love pouring over the "incomplete/exaggerated" stats that Blogger provides.
And therein lies the rub.
I learned long, long ago of the evil bots. The first month I was going to go over 5,000 views (that had the semblance of looking legit), I woke up on the last day to 10,000 hits in a 2 minute time frame coming from Italy, sullying my little accomplishment.
As the years progressed, I've learned to tolerate the Russian bots (who are short-lived), and curse the heavens when I see Italy or the Ukraine appears in bold on Audience map. But, I've tolerated them because they were either (a) generic pageviews hitting the front of the blog or (b) a predilection for the Blogger "Pages" that I collect AARs, Actual Plays, and other website links on.
But in the last month, the Italian and Ukrainian bots have evolved, or have finally notice my individual posts.
I know I've had a few surprises over the years as to what people read (a lone Settlers of Catan post is still my #1 all-time post by thousands of views), but my projects are influenced by what people appear to read/respond to.
The only problem is that my two biggest posts for the year are now about the latest Shadowrun Kickstarter (90% from Italy) and a random post about WizKids Wardlings and the kid's gymnastics season (Ukraine – FYI no pics of the kids.)
Is anyone else noticing this, or have the bots finally deemed to worthy of their bothering?
I know Google has purged the bots stats in the past, so eventually they will go back to their slightly-better-than-normal views.
And so, I'm not entirely whining, here's the Middle-Eastern Civilians from Eureka that I finished this week:
linkOff to Historicon tomorrow!
begins to think about terrain for Team Yankee.
