Anyone else had a sudden and massive rise in visitors and views?
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Another quick update . . . today’s views/visitors stand at 4,000/3,000.
In the last 7 days, I’ve averaged about 3,000 per day.
For the last 30 days, I have 50K views and 43K visitors.
If this keeps up, I’ll have 600K yearly views and 516K yearly visitors. Probably more because the totals increase each week.
Again, I no longer care, other than to see how long it will take me to hit 1M. Dare I say that 1B is in my future?
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Hi there,
That definitely sounds like bot traffic. While it is certainly annoying to see your stats skewed like that, it is unfortunately a common occurrence on the web.
The pattern you described, a massive spike from a specific region (China, in this case) with a very low “views per visitor” ratio (around 1.06) – strongly suggests automated bots scanning your site rather than human interest. They might be scraping content or looking for vulnerabilities (which they won’t find, as WordPress.com manages your security).
A few things to know:
- Security: Your site is safe. WordPress.com has robust firewalls and security measures in place. These visits are just “noise” hitting the front door.
- Stats: We do filter out known bot traffic, but bots evolve quickly. When a new “wave” like this happens, it takes a little bit for the filters to catch up. Once the system identifies this pattern as spam, the numbers usually drop back to normal.
- Correction: We cannot manually edit or remove these numbers from your Stats history. Consider this week an anomaly in your data.
In short, you don’t need to be worried about the safety of your site. It is most likely a temporary wave of bot traffic that will eventually subside.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
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I’m not worried. Like I said, tracking my progress toward one million views/visits.
Also, I don’t consider a month “temporary”, nor do I consider the continuous increase in daily incursions as “a little bit”. This is epic, and I can’t wait to see how far it goes.
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Thanks for the update! We completely understand how unusual this spike feels, especially when it continues for weeks. Our teams are still monitoring this wave of bot-like traffic, and filters will keep adapting as more patterns are detected.
The good news is that your site remains fully secure, and nothing you need to do on your end.
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Been here on WP for 16 years. Stats have never gone up after getting more and more viewers and subscribers. They’ve always gone down.
Today, about 3 total views.
Cheer up, its WP that sucks! NOT YOU!
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Oh, I’m not depressed about this. Amused, is more like it.
Especially about “Our teams are still monitoring this wave of bot-like traffic, and filters will keep adapting as more patterns are detected.”
But, thanks for your concern.
To be clear, it’s not the number of subscribers I’m reporting (I know the majority aren’t readers). It’s that this surge has rendered stats even more meaningless than before. Not that I cared much about it, but once in a while, I would check which posts generated the most views. Now, all that has been blown to bits.
In the last seven days, I’ve registered 40K views and 27K visits… for the previous six weeks, I’m just over 100K views. It’s a good pace toward hitting 1 million in no time, a milestone I’m looking forward to since I have zero confidence the filters will adapt.
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Hi everyone,
We completely hear you and understand how unusual and attention-grabbing these traffic spikes must feel. This is something our team is actively monitoring, as we’ve been noticing similar patterns across multiple sites.
We want to assure you that we are keeping a close eye on this and working to understand these surges.
To help protect your site from unwanted traffic:
- For Business or Commerce plan WordPress.com sites: You can enable Defensive Mode. This can be activated for a few hours or a few days. When active, first-time visitors are verified as genuine before being redirected to your homepage. It’s a helpful way to block bot traffic temporarily. Full details and steps are here: https://wordpress.com/support/defensive-mode/
- Note: We don’t recommend keeping it active for more than a few days.
- For other plugin-enabled WordPress.com sites: You can use plugins to block traffic from China, such as:
- IP2Location Country Blocker
- IQ Block Country
- Please keep in mind that these are third-party plugins. Support for these comes from the plugin developers, not WordPress.com.
Your sites remain secure, and these visits are mostly automated traffic. While they can affect your stats, they don’t impact the safety of your content.
We appreciate everyone sharing updates, it helps us see the full picture of what’s happening across WordPress.com.
Thank you for staying engaged and sharing your experiences!
- For Business or Commerce plan WordPress.com sites: You can enable Defensive Mode. This can be activated for a few hours or a few days. When active, first-time visitors are verified as genuine before being redirected to your homepage. It’s a helpful way to block bot traffic temporarily. Full details and steps are here: https://wordpress.com/support/defensive-mode/
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Hello, I’m noticing the same thing! A big spike in views, and most coming from China. I see many of my posts from several years ago are the ones getting attention. I don’t really know what this means or if I need to be concerned about it. Though it did help to see I’m not the only one experiencing this. (www.wendykennar.com)
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Hi there! You’re definitely not alone, quite a few WordPress.com site owners have been seeing the same sudden spikes in views and visitors, especially with traffic appearing to come largely from China.
What you’re describing lines up very closely with automated bot traffic, not real human readers. A few signs that point to this:
- Very high visitor counts with a very low views-per-visitor ratio.
- Older posts (sometimes from years ago) suddenly getting hit all at once.
- Traffic appearing from a single region with no engagement (no comments, likes, or subscriptions).
The good news is that there’s no need to worry about your site’s safety. WordPress.com runs behind strong firewalls and security systems, so these bots are essentially just “knocking on the door.” They can’t harm your site or access anything sensitive.
A couple of important things to keep in mind:
- Stats noise: While WordPress.com filters out known bot traffic, new bot patterns can slip through temporarily. When that happens, stats can look wildly inflated for days or even weeks. Unfortunately, those numbers can’t be manually removed later.
- Nothing required on your end: If your site feels normal otherwise, you don’t need to change anything. This is being monitored platform-wide.
- Optional mitigation:
- If you’re on a Business or Commerce plan, you can temporarily enable Defensive Mode to challenge first-time visitors.
- On plugin-enabled sites, some people choose country-blocking plugins, though those are third-party tools and entirely optional.
So while the spike can make stats less meaningful for a while, it doesn’t reflect a problem with your content or your site’s health. It’s just one of those odd waves of internet noise that eventually fades once filters adapt.
If you notice anything beyond inflated numbers, like performance issues or real visitor complaints, let us know. Otherwise, you can safely sit back and treat this as a strange (and shared!) anomaly.
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Coming a bit late to this very interesting conversation, I too have experienced a massive rise in visitor stats and reads of my posts. There was an anomalous event on July 15 of 4.9k views from 136 visitors between 4am and 5M, then the numbers went back to normal (100 views). Then my views went up madly from November 6th at well over 500 a day (with a dip to normal for a week), and have continued to rise. My December stats are currently at nearly 20k views from 800 visitors, 95% of these from China, the rest from the US, CA and UK. These visitors are looking at about ten posts, all of interest to students of English literature (a post dissing Virginia Woolf is their favourite), so my theory is that my site has been put on an ESOL reading list. I think if my site had been infested with bots scraping my deathless prose then they’d be everywhere: it’s quite marked how only a few posts are being visited again and again.
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So, it’s now been two months since it started for me, and it shows no sign of abating. Yesterday and the day before, I had 12K each day, with today already at 10K views and 5K visitors.
Since the beginning of November, I show 182K views and 62K visitors.
So, when they say it will eventually slow down . . . well, maybe. When they say developers are working on it . . . well, maybe.
Personally, I’m hoping it lasts at least until I hit 1M views. At this rate, it will happen in about 10 months.
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I think someone turned the bots off, or put up an effective shield wall, at 5pm UK time yesterday, 28th December. Numbers fell immediately to normal levels from that time and China hasn’t looked at my posts since.
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Dang! There goes my goal for a million!
Too bad that, as I was approaching 15K views per day. I bet WP read my comments and said something like, “We’ll fix his goat!”
The joke’s on them . . . I don’t have a goat!
Wait . . . I have zero views from China. That is unusual, as I consistently used to get a few a day (one was a regular reader at one point; commented and everything).
And I’m still getting 2X-3X the number of views I usually get, mostly from Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Hong Kong.
I’m betting WP doesn’t have a sophisticated filter. They might be blocking the whole country of China, but the surrounding countries are still ‘botting’ .
Regardless, stats now are no more than meaningless entertainment . . . probably always were. Comments are the gold standard for audience engagement, and mine remain in the single digits or less.
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Hmm. Today I’ve had three views from China, yesterday was 291, and the 27th had 2.5k. I don’t miss them at all!
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Hey everyone!
First, let me just wish everyone Happy Holidays!
Then I wanted to jump in and thank you all for sharing your experiences and keeping this thread going.
To clarify what’s likely happening: this appears to be automated bot traffic, which tends to come in waves across the web. These bots are typically scanning sites, scraping content, or probing for vulnerabilities (which they won’t find on WordPress.com). The telltale signs are exactly what many of you have described: sudden spikes, high visitor counts with very low views-per-visitor ratios, traffic concentrated from specific regions, and old posts getting hit all at once.
For those noticing a recent drop in traffic from China, I want to be clear that we haven’t implemented any country-level blocks. What we do have are existing security measures that identify and block known malicious crawlers. As bot patterns get flagged as unwanted, they get added to those filters. That’s likely what some of you are seeing now. The bots adapt, our filters adapt, and sometimes there’s a lag in between.
Your sites remain secure throughout all of this. The stats noise is frustrating, but it doesn’t reflect anything wrong with your content or your site’s health.
If you run into any issues or have questions about your specific site, feel free to reach out to our support team. You can contact us at help@wordpress.com or through our help page: https://wordpress.com/help
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Just so it’s on the record, I’m still getting 10X my normal traffic, but, yes, down from 600X.
It looks like only China has dropped off the stats.
… I kind of miss them … I was approaching 20k per day, and a million views seemed doable in a short amount of time. Now I’ll probably be dead before I see seven figures. Oh well, that’s blogging!
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