According to Google God, my monthly view numbers climbed to almost 150,000 in mid-2025. See it? The last "spike" I had before that? Late 2016 - early 2017, easily spotted above. See the tiny bump? That earlier spike topped out at app. 10,000 views per month before returning to my previous baseline. (BTW, though that baseline appears to be "0", it is not. In order to accommodate the huge recent spike, the first horizontal line on the chart had to be increased to 25, 000. In previous years, it was 5,000.)
Man, was I juiced during those months in 2016-17. Thought for sure viral fame was fast approaching. Subsequently tried every shameless groveling technique I could dream up to keep my numbers climbing, or at least steady anyway. Alas, my rapid return to blogosphere obscurity brought my first pathetic fantasy to a screeching halt.
Which brings me back to now. How to make sense of what appears to have occurred beginning in late 2023, culminating in mid-2025? What do you think happened? While you're considering that mystery, please know I welcome any idea you care to offer to help me reverse the current death knell before it's too late. I'll stoop to any level, climb into any gutter; nothing is beneath me. In these early days of 2026, I'm shifting from mystification to mortification watching another precipitous plunge almost a decade after my first - much smaller - fantasy crumbled. I know, I know; numbers aren't everything. Tell that to your favorite ego-less Buddhist monk. Me? I'll crib Bette Davis's words. This blogging gig ain't for sissies.
How reliable are these statistics? They don't make any sense to me. Could those spikes be artifacts?
ReplyDeleteInes; As I said in my post, I am baffled by my recent analytics. Because my daily view numbers from the same period are also way above my norm (normally I average a few hundred views on each daily post - during this same period those numbers went into the thousands) I know something weird is going on here but I don't know what. My rationale behind publishing this post was a slim hope that maybe some computer/IT person who read this might offer some plausible explanation. BTW, I don't know what you mean by "artifact" in this context.
DeleteHey Pat. I believe I started commenting on your Blog in 2019, the first year of my retirement and taking classes at Brookdale. I seriously doubt my comments would account for any spikes in readership and I have to agree with Ines - once again - and ask how reliable these stats are. Unless greater attendance in your classes have resulted in more people learning about your Blog. Maybe ... ??
ReplyDeleteBe well,
Bob
Bob; You did indeed start reading and commenting in 2019, which puts you in your 8th year of continuous and unflagging support of my ramblings. Can never thank you enough for that. I'm still scratching my head about this HUGE aberrational spike in views from late 2023 through 2025. Will probably never figure it out although that doesn't prevent me from egotistically fantasizing that I "broke through", even if just for 18 months or so.
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