Sorry about the outage
by Sapphire (April 26, 2007)
The site exceeded bandwidth and went “off the air” for a couple of hours until I realized it and contacted my host and all that. It’s never gone anywhere near the current limit before, so this is either very, very good or… not so much. I mean, my traffic’s up - but not that much.
Looking at my logs and stuff, I noticed one very odd thing. This post on raising TLA prices got over 26,000 visits, according to AwStats. For comparison, the site feesd got around 10,000 and the index page got 4,500. Now, the post in question inspired a comment or two from regular readers, but absolutely nothing from the marauding hoards that also came? And at no point did my UsersOnline plugin suggest anything that could’ve added up to 26,000 visits to any part of the site.
Plus, you know, my unique visitors is hovering around the same numbers it’s been for months. Uh-huh.
I think those 26,000 hits are bogus but I can’t figure out where they’re coming from. My latest visitor logs record some blind hits to the page, but no referrer.
It’s not on Digg. It could be on one of the 3 billion other social bookmarking sites I didn’t check, but again - nobody commented? Not even to troll, or just to get a link in to their own site?
Anybody have any ideas?
Posted in The BS Files
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April 26th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I wonder if your site had been hit by bots? Did you notice anything in your awstats with the bots? That’s the one thing that seems to do havoc with my numbers - and I’m left wondering why no on leaves comments or clicks on things… just an idea.
I have found a couple of my sites have been hit by stumbleupon - I’m not sure how that happened. Don’t even have any buttons for that… but it happened. And like you - lots of traffic. No comments.
Hmmm…
April 26th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Now that you mention it, the Inktomi bot used up 308 MB of bandwidth. MSN used almost 200, and Google made do with 140. Usually, Google uses the most
And there are a couple of unidentified bots.
That might account for the extra bandwidth, but now I have this image in my head of a deranged Inktomi bot hitting that page over and over again like a robot walking into a wall, LOL! I mean, why?
Someone did tell me in email that she had a few posts that had ridiculous numbers of hits and is thinking it might be some kind of spambot.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I’d say it might be a new spam bot or some army of spam bots for some places. I can see a bot getting confused–anything is possible, but then I’d think lots of sites would be having the same problem.
You don’t have to be a member of stumble to get stumbled though. Anyone can add any site. If people tend to like it, you’ll get more visitors than if people don’t like it or don’t comment on it.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Thanks Bonnie
I have been avoiding social buttons like the plague… but they’re everywhere and one day I’m sure I’ll get sucked into the system…mmm… delicious clicks.
My money is on those crazy bots Sapphire
I’m not sure why they do it - but sometimes they just hit(over and over). Which often explains click discrepancies with CPA offers/CPC ads. Not sure why they do it… but it is nuts when they burn out your bandwidth.