Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Russian Bots Again!

I've posted before about the occasional bulk "visits" I get from Russia in my stats. As I've said, the subject matter here doesn't seem attractive to a Russian audience, and certainly not to the extent that occasionally shows up.

On the other hand, I'm beginning to notice that the big Russian visits seem to take place around the time of US holidays, which makes me wonder if Google is somehow involved in sending extra visits to prop up its stats when they might otherwise be lower. Google charges ad rates based on stats. Exactly how this jiggering may benefit them isn't completely clear, though.

At left are my stats from yesterday, October 9, US Columbus Day. Google, which owns Blogger, seems to be jiggering quite a lot.