Views from spammer or spambot or something!
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Over the past week, I’ve been getting loads of views on the same few posts, all from the same ‘visitor’ – the number of visitors does not go up, and they all show as being in the US, and they’re old posts. It’s presumably some sort of spammer, and it’s annoying because it makes it hard to see the number of genuine views. Is there anything I can do about it? It’s really annoying! Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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We do our best to automatically filter out bots. Some new bots slip through from time to time, and we filter them out as soon as we notice.
With that said, that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening here, it just looks like you have a few new popular posts bringing in traffic from search engines.
Those posts are lengthy, so repeated views could simply be folks returning at a later time to continue reading.
When we see bot activity, it’s typically hundreds of views per one visitor per day on the same post, not like here where it’s two or three per one visitor.
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Thanks for getting back to me, but it is definitely not 2 or 3 views – that may be the average, but most of them are overnight or late evening UK time, and dozens of views come up from the US but it only shows one additional visitor. There were over 100 last Saturday, and on average it’s been 25-30 per day from the same visitor. Most of them are on very old posts, not new ones, and it’s the same dozen or so posts all the time – no genuine reader would look at the same few posts that many in a few days. I’d love to think my posts were that interesting, but they’re not 😀!! Is there anything I can do about it? Thanks.
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but it is definitely not 2 or 3 views
Hm, maybe we’re looking at two different sites.
http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/ is the one you listed and the one I checked. Are you referring to a different site?
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No, that’s the right site. First thing this morning, 20 views but only one visitor. Saturday 10th, when it started, 142 views but only 23 visitors. Sunday, 105 views from 18 visitors. Monday, 66 from 15. And mostly on the same dozen or so old posts. Thanks for your help.
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I see 42 views from 14 visitors today so far, that’s an average of 3 views per visitor.
For Saturday the 10th, that’s an average of 6.17 views per visitor.
And for Sunday the 11th, an average of 5.83 views per visitor.
And Monday the 12th, an average of 4.4 views per visitor.
I wouldn’t worry about that, it’s quite normal.
Also, keep in mind that the stats aren’t in real time. It takes longer to identify unique visitors, so you may see view stats before you see up-to-date visitors, which would explain what you saw earlier today (20 views per visitor).
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Unfortunately I can’t see any way to attach a file here, but I’ve taken a screenshot of the stats page as it is now, early morning UK time, showing 13 views from 2 people. 1 of them is a “regular” viewer. The other views are all from the same spambot/spammer – they are all on the same few old posts which have been getting dozens of views all week, having not had any views for years. The average number of views was 1.5 per visitor until last Saturday, when it went up to 6 per visitor – 105 views in one day from the same “person”. If there’s nothing you can do about this, then fair enough, I accept that, but please will you at least acknowledge that this is a problem? I can see from early in the morning when there have only been one or two visitors that most of the “views” are coming from the same “person”, and, as I keep saying, they are all on the same few old posts. If it can’t be helped then so be it, but please will you at least acknowledge the problem? Thank you.
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You can upload the screenshot to your media library and we can gain access to it there. I’d be happy to take a look at it.
Thanks,
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Thanks – I don’t know if you can open the Word doc, and unfortunately it only shows up very small in JPEG. All it really shows is that there’d been a lot of views from one viewer – I keep saying this, because I can see by the increase in views relative to the increase in viewers, and it’s also very odd that there’ve been dozens of views on a lot of very old posts, but unfortunately no-one seems to be listening to me. Thank you.
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I checked your attachment and the current stats for today and the last several days, and like everyone, I do not see any sign of spam/bot viewing.
Right now for today I see 58 views on 17 pages by 8 viewers with an average of 7.25 views per visitor from four different countries. None of those numbers indicate suspicious activity. And your stats have remained fairly consistent as well. There aren’t any unusual spikes that cannot be accounted for. The amount of visitors you receive each day is extremely consistent and how each visitor browse your site can be different based on their habits. With the amount of content to your site, one visitor with views 20 wouldn’t be abnormal at all.
I understand that there are some concern with the validity of your stats, but based off of them being fairly consistent over a long period of time, I don’t believe there is an issue. The spam bot activity that we normally see on WordPress.com sites and stats do not look like what I have seen within your stats.
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The multiple views are all on the same few old posts, and must all be coming from the same person as the number of views goes up when the number of viewers doesn’t. There’s no way that someone would look at the same few old posts 100 times in a week. There is definitely something wrong. But thanks for looking and getting back to me anyway.
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I’ve uploaded another screenshot showing that so far this morning I’ve supposedly had FIFTY-FIVE views from just THREE visitors. This is on a total of just 14 posts, and they are nearly ALL the same old posts which have been getting dozens of views for the past few weeks. This is not normal. If you can’t or won’t help, then please just tell me so, but will you please at least acknowledge that this is NOT normal? It’s the same few old posts, over and over again, and it’s all views from the US, and it is all coming from ONE viewer – FIFTY-FIVE views from THREE visitors is not normal, especially when it’s all the same old posts. Sorry to type in capitals, but I’m finding it very frustrating that you keep telling me that there isn’t a problem when there so blatantly is.
Thank you.
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Until last Saturday, when this started, the average number of views per visitor had been 1.5. Saturday 11th – 6.17. Sunday 12th – 5.83. Saturday 17th – 8.73. Sunday 18th – 8.79, and that’s after a new post which 12 people have each viewed once. And even those are misleading because most visitors only view one or two posts: at some times of day, usually early morning, the stats show 50 or more views from one “visitor”.
Views this week on several very old posts:
The Double Life of Mistress Kit Kavanagh – 32. Previously, only 12 view in total, of which 8 were in 2016.
The Settlers by Vilhelm Moberg – 30. Previously, only 27 views in total, and most of those were in 2014.
The 1980s with Dominic Sandbrook – 45. Previously only 28 views in total, of which 27 were in 2016 or 2017.And several others.
As I’ve said, if there’s nothing you can do about this then I quite appreciate that, but I would be very grateful if someone would at least tell me so, instead of saying that there is no problem when there clearly is. I don’t know how to make any progress with this at the moment. I keep explaining the problem but I don’t feel that I’m getting anywhere.
Thank you.
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Has anyone got any ideas about this? If it isn’t a spambot, what could it be? Much as I would love to think that a small number of posts from several years ago are so fascinating that one person wishes to read them half a dozen times a day, several days in succession, it hardly seems likely. Please help, if you can! Thanks.
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The multiple views are all on the same few old posts
These could very well be posts that rank highly in search engines.
My own site gets lots of views on posts from 2010 and earlier, and they all rank highly in Google.
I’ve uploaded another screenshot showing that so far this morning I’ve supposedly had FIFTY-FIVE views from just THREE visitors.
As mentioned earlier, keep in mind that the stats aren’t in real time. It takes longer to identify unique visitors, so you may see view stats before you see up-to-date visitors.
This is exactly why you see a low view/visitor count when you check, and when we check later, we don’t.
That appears to be the main source of the confusion here, and to keep things sane, I recommend only checking your stats once or twice a day. :)
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I have a couple of regular viewers who access my site each time via the same old posts that they bookmarked years ago. Only then do they head for the front page to see if there are new posts. I wonder if that is what is happening in your case?
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Thank you so much for getting back to me, but I doubt it because this just suddenly started happening last Saturday – it’d never happened before. They’re all fairly obscure books, as well – I can’t imagine that such a large number of people would suddenly have started searching for the same 12 books since last Saturday. It’s not as if they’re well-known ones, or even recent ones. And how could 12 posts all suddenly have rocketed up search engines last Saturday, when there’d been next to no views on most of them since 2016?
None of this is making any sense to me – the only logical answer is that it’s a spambot … with a strange obsession with 12 particular books!
I actually tried searching on Google and Bing for those book titles myself, in case that answered any questions. 3 of them showed my reviews quite high up, but the others didn’t.
Is there anything else it could be? Thanks again for your help.
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I’m sorry, but we just aren’t seeing any spam bot activity in your stats.
Search engine rankings can change at any time, and that seems to be the most likely answer here.
You will indeed some visitor/view mismatch because those are not update in real-time, but by the end of the day it will iron out.
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OK, thanks for looking. They seem to be sticking to the same 12 posts, so hopefully I can assume that views on other posts are “real” and not spambots.
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@setinthepast one thing I’ve seen too: if someone is using a browser or extension that loads previews of recently / frequently visited pages, those can sometimes count as a view too. So if one person loved an old post and read it a few times (I know I’ve run across a few old posts I bookmark and re-read / share with friends), it could show up on their browser’s “blank” page — which could count as a visit each time they open a new blank tab or browser window.
Also, if it helps, it’s only spam or a malicious bot if someone is getting targeted with an unwanted advertisement or some other payload. If they are trying to spam you but the only result is that you have a little boost in your stats from an unknown source, they might want to reconsider their career choices — and hopefully they will realize that and give up soon.
But if you do end up seeing a spammy referrer or something like that, we can likely help you hide that — so do let us know!
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