Last night, I opened up my WordPress account to read the latest blogs. At the corner of the screen was the familiar orange beacon telling me that there was a message of some sort. Usually, it is a star to point out that someone liked a post, or it is a dialogue balloon signaling that someone had made a comment.
This beacon was saying that my stats were booming. The blog was receiving a lot more traffic than usual. I have seen this one pop up several times, and it always makes me wonder what is happening.
Did a new reader discover the blog and make their way through a bunch of posts? It is always cool when that happens, and it is easy to determine. The stats will show a bunch of posts have been read by a few people. Yep, someone spent a long time reading my mundane writings, and I appreciate them for it.
Was one of the posts on a topic that has suddenly become a popular search term? I think that has happened a couple of times when older posts jumped to the top of the stat line.
Did I write about something obscure enough that when someone searches for it this blog will show up? I am pretty sure that has happened a couple of times. I am not trying to brag, but I believe this site has become the go-to place for a couple of topics.
Is there some bot out there that found some phrase on my blog and ran with it? I have often wondered how many bots are out there lurking around.
All of those questions went through my mind when I saw the booming beacon but clicking the stats made me wonder what was going on.
A post that I wrote last Fall, “Let’s Go Peay!“, was off the charts. It has gotten more hits in the past several hours than it has in the last several months. How did that happen? Was there suddenly a bunch of people interested in a chant from a small university in Tennessee?
I wrote the post because I always thought the chant was cool, but I never thought it would be something that would bring a lot of readers. Apparently, it is more interesting than I thought, or someone’s browser messed up.
Last week, the university’s football field collapsed into a sinkhole.
You can go ahead and insert a Bane joke. I am sure everyone else has.
That could have made Austin Peay a popular search term, but I would think that interest has past.
Anyway, I am not complaining. Everyone wants a lot of people to read their stuff. I just find it interesting that an old post has suddenly found fame. Heck, it is now the most viewed post of the past quarter. For all the people who read it, I appreciate you stopping by and hope you will stay for a while. I also hope you are real people.
SBI: A Thinning Crowd 
It’s weird how sometimes a post get really popular. I’ve had it happen a few times too and it never makes any sense to me. Nice — but peculiar 🙂
I almost got swallowed by a sinkhole once. Like having your own, personal earthquake!
Dang, you were lucky to escape. People can get lost in those things.
I wish I understood how search engines work. I had a post about Vikings that got hundreds of hits over a couple of years and then just stopped dead.
I had a post that did that. It wasn’t about something cool like Vikings. It was about gas pumps.
I still get more recorded hits on my old air guitar post than anything else since. I’m never quite sure whether or not to be pleased about this! In the end, like you, I’m grateful to everyone who reads my blogs, old or new.
That was a great piece of writing.
I get hits thanks to “Turkish sex house” or words to that effect. I haven’t found it yet on my blog.
It’s a sign. You should write about it.
Bwahahaha. Some things better left under the sheet.