Anyone else had a sudden and massive rise in visitors and views?
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Getting in late to the discussion of this, but have noticed the oddest stats/”visits” for some time on my blog posts. So this is what’s going on.
Having been on WP for some time, I just figured it was another quirky thing/update/experiment/ownership adjustment that always seems to happen around Nov-Dec-Jan. Real life was intruding so I was blogging less, so just laughed/ignored it. But the stats are pretty useless now. That’s somewhat annoying .
Appreciate all those who took time to comment here and offer info on the situation.
Hopefully the New Year will bring some change. But it is WP ( even though I do pay for a plan, it seems pointless/stupid to pay any more when it’s always been difficult to get attention about problems.) Not sure the WP “engineers” are what they were in the beginning.- WP certainly is very different animal now.
Just having to roll with is, keep a sense of humor, and ignore some of it – just don;t have time or energy to deal with it .
Sorry for those who are using WP as a money source.
Thanks for the heads up Disperser – and your calm sensible repeated efforts to get to the bottom of it.
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My blog has received 45,000 views from different IP addresses since January 1st! It started in November and has tapered off over the last two days. Most of the traffic is coming from North Bergen, NJ, and Singapore. None of it comes through search.
I really wanted to go viral this year, but not like this!
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I had 151K in December, so you’re just getting started.
It has tapered to only 6K this month, of which only a tenth are likely legit.
Such is the blogging life in the age of AI.
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You and I both wish . . . if you look at earlier conversations, you might spot the place where I speak about that.
Basically, the way it works, and similarly to WordAds, the system checks for non-human patterns and engagement metrics. The short answer is that it’s not likely to be fooled by bots.
Besides, you would need even larger numbers for it to make any significant money. At the peak of my traffic (approaching 15K per day), if they would have counted the bots as legitimate, it might have made enough to make it worthwhile.
But, you can try it. Personally, I didn’t want to litter my blog with ads just to test if it would work.
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That’s good news for me since they’re so annoying for readers.
I guess we just ride the bot tide! -
Suddenly today I got hundreds of views–10 times more than my usual numbers–most emanating from the US and Israel. Bots?
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Probably. Or you can pretend your fan club finally organized. It’s what I did.
FYI, that’s how mine started and it went all the ay up to about 15,000 per day, then tapered off to about 8,000. There was a sudden drop when I think WP blocked China, but I still get about 1,000-2,000 visitors/views per day, but now the majority is from the USA (still bots, but likely AI-related).
As a reference, prior to this, normal visitor volume was 20-30 per day on a good day, and 10-15 on regular days.
Basically, stats are now even more worthless than before. Good luck.
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Ugh–same thing has just happened to me. I feel violated. Funnily enough, there are no visits fro China–overwhelmingly from the US and Israel. Israel is a spyware pioneer, so that worries me.
I also have the Clustr maps widget installed, o that allows me to see a more accurate number of views–far, far fewer! -
I also use ClustrMaps and while they are now back on track, they also showed large numbers of visitors and views, as did Google Metrics. If extremely bored, you can read the earlier updates I posted above.
Basically, all three metrics I used showed the same jump, up to 15k/day at one point. All three are now showing lower numbers, with ClustrMaps probably closer to actual readers/visitors.
And yes, currently the highest numbers are from US, probably AI training bots, including (I suspect) Anthropic’s own Claude (which now can be integrated with your blog, apparently),
My previous high numbers were generated from Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, and a few others.
All those are jockeying for the second and third spots. The US has led the pack since the end of December, when China abruptly went to zero, and the US jumped from a few hundred to around 1,000 views per day.
If you read the responses from WP, they are furiously working to resolve the issue, but them pesky AI bots are too sneaky . . . which is why I still maintain stats are now totally worthless.
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Ugh, so disappointing. Only silver lining is that perhaps this will cure me of my addition to checking my stats!
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My huge number of spurious views that showed up are marked as my own views. I did not do them. What’s up with that?
This happened for one day a few months ago, and just happened again over two days (yesterday and the day before).
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That’s odd.
That’s not what I experienced. Perhaps a good time to reach out to support.
I assume you would know if you’ve been hacked and your PC/Mac/Phone was hijacked?
But, regardless, I think reaching out to support is a good idea. They can dig deeper into the traffic source and either confirm it’s from you or from someone impersonating you.
Good luck.
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GOOD NEWS!
I’m back on track toward achieving my million views/visitors goal!
Yup. Today, April 13, 2026, China came back online with 10.6K views since 1:00pm my time. That’s about 3.5 hours from the time of this posting, so about 3K views per hour.
If this keeps up, given that I’m 464K views away from 1.0M views, I’ll only need ~6.5 days to crack the million mark.
Yippe!?
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Hi there,
Thanks for sharing your experiences here. I can understand how confusing and, honestly frustrating it feels to see sudden spikes that don’t reflect real engagement.
What you’re describing does match patterns we sometimes see when automated crawlers, scrapers, or AI-related bots hit WordPress.com sites in waves. These visits can show up in Stats because they are technically HTTP requests, even if they aren’t human readers.
I know it can make stats feel less useful. The best long-term indicator of real growth tends to be engagement signals, comments, likes, followers, email subscribers, and search referrals rather than raw view counts alone.
If anyone is seeing something unusual, like traffic being marked as your own views when you’re certain it wasn’t you, that’s worth contacting support directly so we can look more closely at the logs. -
This update is for them stumbling here looking for answers about massive stats jumps . . . all I have to say to you is this: get used to it, and accept the fact stats have lost all meaning and significance. It’s not that they “feel less useful”, it’s that they are uselss, utterly and completely.
I’ve done many updates here, so here’s the latest. Yesterday, after a relatively calm few months, when my views/visitors numbers were merely 10-20 times my regular numbers, the bots came back with a vengeance . . . 59,690 views and 25K visitors in 11 hours.https://disperser.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/screenshot_20260214_074951_jetpack.jpg
Today, just shy of 8 hours, I have 60,256 views and 24K visitors.
So, if you have just started experiencing a “minor” surge, that’s what you might have to look forward to.
My advice: don’t fret about it . . . even legitimate stats rarely meant anything. “likes” have a tad more meaning but those are also a poor metric.
Audience engagement is the only thing you should care about, and that’s comments. After all, WP is a social platform, and that implies conversations.
On the other hand, if views are all you care about, then be thankful the AI Overlords have taken notice of your blog!
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Hello @disperser,
Thank you for taking the time to share such a detailed update about what you’ve been seeing. We truly appreciate you highlighting how these dramatic bot-driven surges are affecting your site statistics.
You’re absolutely right — when traffic spikes are largely caused by bots, raw view and visitor numbers become far less reliable as indicators of genuine audience interest. That can understandably make stats feel frustrating or even meaningless.
While WordPress.com actively filters known malicious traffic at the platform level, some automated visits can still appear in site stats. Because of this, focusing on meaningful engagement metrics — such as comments, followers, and email subscribers — often provides a much clearer picture of how real readers are interacting with your content. Those conversations and community signals are usually the strongest indicators of impact.
If you’d like an additional layer of insight, you can also connect Google Analytics (GA4) to your site. GA4 includes more advanced bot filtering and deeper engagement reporting, which may help you better distinguish automated traffic from genuine visitor behavior.
I hope this helps provide some clarity. If you’d like guidance on setting up Google Analytics or reviewing your engagement data, feel free to let us know — we’re happy to assist.
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I’ve had the same problem, only most of my views have come from the US. They could be Chinese people using VPNs, but who knows. It’s weird and it doesn’t feel right. My stats were growing and holding steady before, and now they’re all out of whack.
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