Sunday 1 August 2021

Hello Sweden

I don't think I know anyone in Sweden but if any Swedes are reading this then please say hello back because you've been visiting my blog an awful lot recently. 

I realised something strange was happening to my blog stats a few months ago. They have soared from an average of 300 to 400 visits a week to around 4,000 visits. On closer examination I discovered that the exceptionally high numbers are coming from Sweden. But why is Sweden interested in my blog? 

I spoke with my blogger friend Vallypee who blogs at Rivergirl. Val, like me, uses Blogger to support her blogs. We had a chat about it and she loaded up her blog stats to investigate. Sure enough, exactly the same thing was happening to her blog. 

Here is a screen shot of the hits on my blog for the last 7 days:


Val and myself noted that none of these additional viewers have opened any of our blog posts so were they scanning blog titles or was it some kind of bot? I'm very confused. What would a bot want with my blog? I rarely mention politics or religion and even when I do there's nothing there that could have a major effect on International relations, life and the universe so what on earth is the bot activity all about - or if it's people scanning my titles then what would be the purpose of doing that?

My stats figures may show Sweden as top but for quite some time Russia has been up there with the top countries to visit my blog. I might not know anyone from Sweden but I definitely don't know anyone from Russia. It's all very strange and, although it does me no harm whatsoever (well none that I know of!) if anyone reading this can throw some light on it for me then please do. I'm starting to get obsessed with my stats figures and that's never a good thing!