I’ve been blogging about music for ten years, and though my output has diminished from what it was during my peak years of 2017-2022 – to the point where I’m now generally posting only once a week – my readership has gradually increased, probably due in large part to the fact I now have an accumulated back catalog of nearly 2,000 posts. But I’ve recently noticed a significant uptick in daily views of my blog, from an average of 300-400 per day to well over 1,000 per day.

At first, I was elated by these stats, thinking that my blog had finally broken through the clutter and was getting more notice in the search engines (I do not pay for search engine optimization of any kind). But after checking the origins of my views by country, I was alarmed to see that 70-75% of my recent views are coming from China! Over the past ten years, the vast majority of my views have come from the U.S., as expected, followed by a much smaller but sizable number from the UK, Canada, Australia, India and Germany, in that order. For 2023, China came in 19th, with only 0.45% of the total views for that year, while last year it ranked #18 with only 0.37% of the total.

While I’m thrilled that so many Chinese people appear to suddenly be flocking to my little music blog, I can’t help but think these numbers aren’t legit, and may simply be bots or some other nefarious activity. Has anyone else noticed a sudden uptick in traffic to their blogs?