Nothing like a car accident with the attendant whiplash and concussion—not to mention worrying about whether the impaired driver who hit me can been tracked down, if she is insured, and questions about buying another car—to really put the brakes on one’s reading an writing. I finished two books last month, abandoned one, am still crawling through another, and the two short volumes I expected to easily breeze through last week for the end of German Lit Month are far from finished.
To add insult to injury (so to speak), my blog has been subject to an unending stream of bot traffic from China over the past few months. It kind of takes the fun out of everything when you cannot even tell where the legitimate, organic (i.e. human) engagement is going. WordPress keeps congratulating me on my incredible booming stats, but the possibility of installing a plug-in to help stem the unwelcome traffic requires upgrading to a nearly $400/year Professional Plan which is surely overkill for a pastime that earns me little more than a number of (greatly appreciated) review copies while inspiring continual purchases of even more books that I would like to read and write about.
All this to say: Where has 2025 gone? And how has the world become uglier, meaner, and ever more subject to conflict, political corruption, and natural destruction? I wish I knew.
roughghosts 
I’m so sorry to hear this, Joe. I hope you are on the mend. And the same thing has happened to my blog. Stats are booming with visits from China. It’s so bizarre.
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Thanks, Melissa. Sorry to hear your blog is also under attack. You have to wonder what they are after.
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Oh dear… I hope you are well in the mend. It sounds terrible, not just health wise but financially. I hope the festive season is kinder to you.
My blog is also under “attack” from China. I believe the content is being scraped to train language models. There doesn’t seem to be much you can do about it other than, as you say, fork out large sums for protection or take your blog private, which, for me at least, defeats the purpose of having a book blog.
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Thanks, Kim. It’s good to know I’m not alone with the bots. I do hope they get bored with my site and move along. 🙂
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Sorry to hear about your accident – hope you recover soon. I am in the same position with views from China. My stats have doubled this year but it’s hard to know what’s organic and what isn’t. I’m planning to just subtract all views from China and trust that as my total!
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Thanks, Cathy. Clearly I’m not alone with the bot situation, but now it looks the US has gotten into the action as my American stats have exploded (data centres funneling traffic from who knows where I guess) and its harder to cut out my US views because over all a huge percentage of my real traffic comes from there. 😦
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I’m not really a big ‘stat-watcher’ but I have enjoyed seeing my blog grow incrementally over the years, so this feels like a bit of a blow in that way. I’ll have to check how my US views are going in comparison to past months.
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The US flood slowed down, but I’m afraid that the use of private networks (VPNs) masks activity. The day I wrote this post and was so upset by the shifting flood of presumed bot traffic, an unusual number of views registered from Australia on my laptop, were marked as coming from Bangladesh!
Like you I enjoyed watching the natural growth of my site but there is nothing natural in suddenly going from 60k views last year to 140k this year (unless translated lit is suddenly more popular than I ever imagined).
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So sorry to hear about your car accident; I hope your recovery, for both your injuries and the hassle re sorting out your vehicle, proves to be swift and that you can have a more peaceful December.
The world does seem meaner and nastier; I am afraid I agree with you and try to resolve to celebrate when I do come across kindness and human warmth. I am grateful that the book bloggers community often provides a much needed antidote. Sorry about the invasion of your blog though; that is miserable and a pain too.
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Thank you so much. It’s true that there are pockets of kindness in the world, we have to hold on to that.
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Reading your post & the subsequent comments, it appears as though the bots have turned to literature. I’ve had the same “booming stats” notifications. I’m not too fussed about it though, if AI or some learning model wants to add obscure Tamil poets, or surrealist literature from Prague to its database so be it.
I hope your injuries aren’t too severe Joseph and things do get back on track soon.
As an aside I was in Alice Springs last week (a mere 41 degrees Celsius) to visit the NPY Women’s Council. Their Law & Culture now firmly embedded.
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So nice to hear that you were back in Alice Springs. I may have had a wicked cold while I was there, but I would not have missed the opportunity to be in that gorgeous country for anything. Thanks for helping make that happen.
As for the bots which now seem to be coming through the US as well, I’m not worried about them accessing my reviews of obscure literature, but 1000s of bots coasting through my hundreds of posts each day obscure my ability to see where the 100-200 human visitors are going.
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Yes true your true audience is important, but in reflection do the stats dictate what you write/review? If mine did I’d not write anything …. Oh hold that thought, I’ve not written anything since February (besides a listing of Dublin Literary Award nominees. 🤣)
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So sorry you were in an accident. Can’t believe that driver just took off. The world is getting meaner. Time is accelerating. I also find people are very muddle headed these days. Not attentive.
I have had such visitor spikes but never from China. No clue if I’m visited by US bots.
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Thanks, Caroline. I just started getting US bots, especially through certain cities, but these days the source activity could be anywhere and just routing through data centres. This is the underside of AI at work I suppose.
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That is true. It’s not that important in the end. It would just be nice if it stopped.
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Sorry to hear about your accident, Joe. I hope it works out, re: insurance and recovery. Thinking of you. And I have those bots too. Many hundreds every day for a week or so and then, whoosh, gone.
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They disappeared for a week or two in October and then returned with a vengeance. The new wrinkle now is that they seem to be routing through the US as well. I have over 900 US views today, vast numbers from select cities, the most from a place in Virginia known for its data centres.
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You sound properly hacked off and I’m not surprised, I do hope you’re recovering, accidents are horrible things to happen
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Thanks. I’m trying to rest, but there’s so much to do and think about after an accident which is more difficult when your brain has been rattled.
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I have also also been following you for quite a while and I am sorry to hear about your car accident and the bot surge. I hope your recovery will be swift and that you can have a more peaceful December. In case the situation worsens, do you considering leaving or deleting the blog altogether? 😞
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Thank you for the good thoughts. My reading may be slower for a while and the bots may be a nuisance, but I would not delete my blog I feel like it is a vital part of a larger network that includes other bloggers, writers, small publishers and translators. The connections are invaluable. But I have made some of my essay posts private for the time being thinking that might slow the bots down. I hasn’t helped. Hopefully they will soon move on.
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Sorry hear about your accident as for the Chinese bots I must have avoid that most of traffic to
My blog from us and uk in fact china isn’t even in the top ten not sure if that is because I pay for word press these days and have a middle of the road plan as a lot of the tech bits I never sure how they work or it’s just my blog is just to small and they are not bothered about me which is ok by me
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They just haven’t found your genius yet, Stu! The bots are not reading or engaging, I think they just hit the post and move on. I don’t think they come from China alone but come through data services located in various cities or countries. I have a Premium account and I don’t think they interfere with normal traffic, but when you have 3000 views from China and hundreds of posts are being counted as viewed, it’s hard to tell where the real people are going. I do wish WP could filter some of this kind of activity out.
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Oh goodness Joe – I hope you’re ok. As for the bots I have the occasional mad day when there is mass activity but it’s usually just views rather than spamming or anything like that. Such a pain when it happens tho…
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Thanks, Karen. You will notice if your views escalate exponentially and posts unviewed for years are suddenly clocking a dozen or more views per day. It does suck.
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I’m sorry to hear about the accident! I’ve heard a number of bloggers complain about bots and whatnot too. WordPress as a whole is becoming “enshittified” (I hate that word, but it fits) which makes me sad. And as a fellow Albertan, I really felt your last paragraph. I’ve written more angry emails to government officials (for all the good it will do) in the last couple months than I have in my whole life. I’m tired. Your and others’ book blogs are a light in this darkness though!
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Thanks, Laura. When I make veiled comments about the state of politics I’m sure they imagine that I’m eluding to the US and have no idea what kind of dystopic reality we’re experiencing here these days.
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Hi, Joe, Sorry to hear about the accident, disconcerting. Hope yr ok. … More on the bot activity: Try Google Search Console. You create an account then add the link to the JetPack Traffic page in your blog dashboard (assuming your template works anything like mine). An interesting advantage to the Google Console is that it returns information on search queries to your blog. And it doesn’t count the bots at all. And it’s free to use. Joe… Here’s a link to the GSC site: https://search.google.com/search-console/about
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Thanks for the tip, Joe. I will give it a shot.
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Joe, along with your other readers, I want to add my sympathy for your recent unpleasantries. There are many of us real humans who look forward to your posts and greatly admire your writing and your mind. I hope the holiday season improves. Terry
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Thank you, Terry. There is so much that comes with an accident on top of the physical/mental impacts that my reading is really suffering. I must remind myself that this too will pass…
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An accident alone would be hard to deal with, especially with injuries like yours, but those circumstances even more so; also, as you say, the political situation and the slide towards year-end….it’s a Lot. It IS just a few more days until the Solstice, though, so the light will begin returning, so there is that…bigger than all of us. I’ve decided to reread Tali Girls next year. I just can’t stop thinking about it. Oh, have you thought of rereading? I know it’s hard, when you have eleventy-billion new books awaiting your attention, but it can be comforting when focus is fragmented? (I’ve had some issues commenting here, for awhile, not bot-related I’m sure, so I hope this goes through.)
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