I have been neglecting this place somewhat of late.

Normally when I do that, readership naturally drops off.  My readers obviously require regular feeding and unfortunately I have led them to believe that they will be fed every day.

Now I have a yoke called Google Analytics which lets me know how many visitors drop by which is mildly interesting as it shows for example that if I write about smoking or electrofags that I get tons more visitors.  However, I write to amuse myself, not to get more traffic.

I noticed at the start of the month though that even though I was scribbling fairly banal stuff that according to Analytics I was getting tons of traffic – about twice what I would expect.  What was even weirder, I wasn’t actually getting all those visits.  It transpired that a hacker is fucking around with my figures.

What is strange about this hacker is that he has nothing against me or my site.  He’s not interrupting my site or trying to get into it, and if it weren’t for Analytics I wouldn’t even know he was there.  And even then I have to study my Analytics to find him, but there he is, lurking in the Language section.

Now 99% of my traffic uses languages EN-US or EN-GB.  But then a new language started appearing –

Secret.ɢoogle.com You are invited! Enter only with this ticket URL. Copy it. Vote for Trump!

Then new ones started to crop up –

o-o-8-o-o.com search shell is much better than google!

and

Google officially recommends o-o-8-o-o.com search shell!

His latest one is quite fancy –

Vitaly rules google ☆*:｡゜ﾟ･*ヽ(^ᴗ^)ﾉ*･゜ﾟ｡:*☆ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯(ಠ益ಠ)(ಥ‿ಥ)(ʘ‿ʘ)ლ(ಠ_ಠლ)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉʕ•̫͡•ʔᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ(=^ ^=)oO

Whoever Vitali is, he obviously has a big thing against Google and in that he has my total sympathy and support.  I honestly don’t know what he hopes to achieve with all this though.  I doubt Google are particularly interested and most site owners will just bask in the glory of extra traffic that has apparently appeared from nowhere.

I hope he keeps it up though.

If ever I decide to sell advertising, or indeed sell the site I can show them my Analytics records.

I’ll be worth a fortune.