One of the problems of the statistics you see on your blog is that you have no idea just how many of those likes and visits are human.
I think, on a “really good day” at the old version of this site (sceadugenga.com), I might have seen several hundred visits and more than half of them will “like” the content. It used to make me feel really well liked to have a thousand subscribers and so many visitors.
That was before I switched domains to reflect my change in blog focus to be more centered on my own writing and the writing community (including music).
Roughly 5% of that readership and subscribers followed.
Let that sink in for just a moment…
That’s fifty out of a thousand “subscribers”. Not so popular now, am I?
The problem is: most of those subscribers never read anything I wrote. They would subscribe and hope for a reciprocal subscription back. Or they would flood my notifications with 20+ likes in thirty seconds (you could literally watch them pop up almost faster than they could navigate from post to post) once every three or four weeks, which was hardly indicative of reading my content — mostly to get me to flood their notifications with the same dopamine kick of likes.
I had people “like” my post redirecting them to this site. And then — not follow.
Some of that attrition was because my content was not to the readers’ tastes. Or because my personality clashed with their expectations. I’m not an easy person to like, either because of my writing or my personality.
But I can’t say that they were all human followers.
The site has grown slowly, more organically, since then. Partly, because I see if someone is going to stick around and maybe even interact before I do a reciprocal follow. If someone’s content is not to my liking, I do sometimes skip visiting them entirely after a few visits, especially if there is little or no interactivity — which isn’t to say that their content is bad, but it isn’t something I would enjoy reading. Or a site might feel like content is scraped or AI autoposted. And I’m not above unfollowing if there are no recent updates.
I also don’t usually go hunting for new content to read; if I have a broad criticism of creative writing in the blogosphere, it is that too many writers tell instead of show when it comes to poetry or fiction. And there are very few cases of people generating original content. Or they really like recycling content to add to those bot-infused “like” numbers for an individual post. That lack of seeking also keeps my site from acquiring new readers. I understand how that works.
That’s a different post, however.
I still have had lingering suspicions about the human nature of some of those subscriptions and likes that remained after my migration. And I think I answered my questions about those. Maybe not entirely, but I’ve confirmed a few things.
I put in some proxy and firewall rules over the past month or so to limit content scrapers. Also: to limit bots to validated legit bots looking for search engine content.
The results?
Either my newest series is really turning off people with my writing (entirely possible, especially with everything falls apart) or I’ve eliminated about half of my daily readership with the security measures I’ve added.
That’s a huge drop to see in the stats. Half? Yikes!
Thing is, I know what some of those bots were doing now (and many of those hits were bots, not legit site visits), and it wasn’t reading my blog.
So congrats! If you are interacting this site, you are most likely NOT a bot.
assessment is made without warranty and [insert other lawyer-speak here]
Don’t everyone thank me all at once.
Anyhow: I’ve quite likely reduced my readership to more realistic numbers. And the spam content has gone down so much that I might think about adding my contact form back to the site.
Maybe. The contact form has mostly been a PITA.
So… maybe not.
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