One thing I noticed, though, was that the assets of the underperformers often included facilities in Silicon Valley and similar places -- but what puzzled me was that they'd acquire a half-used building from Underfperformer A that would be half a mile from another half-used building from Underperformer B. I could never figure out why they didn't consolidate half-used building A with half-used building B and sell one of them.
Well, a couple years after I left that company, the CEO and CFO went to federal prison for securities fraud. They weren't making money from running an efficient operation, they were running a second-cousin to a Ponzi scheme. They didn't care if they could save millions by selling half-used buildings.
In short, I was seeing something a little hinky, and some time later, I recognized that this was a sign that bigger things were wrong. I'm now wondering if something hinky's up with Google, which owns Blogger, which is the platform this blog uses.
I check my statistics. It gives me an idea of my audience, and a writer needs to know his audience. On the left is a listing of my statistics (unique page views) for the past week by visitor's country. It's pretty much what you'd expect, most of my visits are from the US, with Canada usually in second place, then the UK, Australia, and a smattering of European and other countries. The odd thing is the past week -- 715 page views from Russia.
Pretty much the only time I get hits from Russia is when I get these massive clusters. I don't get them every week. It's against my expectations -- normally I pretty much know I'm writing for a limited audience in places that have an active interest in the progress (or lack of it) of Anglicanorum coetibus and related issues. Not many Russians, let's face it, have this interest. Why the occasional blips? And the blips, let's face it, are clearly enough to throw my statistics off. These aren't just fat-finger mistakes at the keyboard by occasional people.
There are various possibilities. Maybe Putin has ordered his intelligence operatives to jack my statistics up as part of his conspiracy with President Trump, but I doubt it. Maybe other Russians are doing this for some obscure criminal purpose, but I also doubt that. The numbers, while they throw my own statistics off, aren't big enough to make a difference overall. And Russian hackers, as far as can see, have nothing to gain simply by visiting my site, and nothing to gain by scamming my visitors in some way.
Also, I get no money from Google. I don't "monetize" my blog, and my audience is so small I wouldn't get much of anything if I did. So who benefits by jacking up my statistics? I don't, my visitors don't, and ordinary Russian nerd-crazies don't. Not only that, weeks can go by without the sort of blips I got in the past week.
One answer is that the past week, with a US holiday, might normally have lower-than-usual viewership, not just at my blog, but at blogs generally. This hurts Google. Remember that everyone who visits a Blogger blog is a product for Google. Google sells advertising on some blogs, and it also sells advertising elsewhere on the basis of what it learns from visits to this and all other Blogger blogs, whether they're monetized or not. The advertisers may pay, at least in part, based on total hits.
I'm wondering if Google is jacking up statistics for all Blogger blogs overall to jack up payments from advertisers. The hits from Russia may be coming in concert with Google as part of an overall pattern. I can't imagine another explanation for this phenomenon right now.
A lot of bloggers and YouTube commentators are more and more suspicious of Google. Certainly others have seen examples of Google manipulating statistics to benefit its position with advertisers.
