Tuesday, June 02, 2026
June 2 report
Blog visits are up, though I haven't counted total visits yet (I will). The main commercial one, blatant self promotion, went from 1282 in March to 4661 in April to 7467 in May (just measured); that is what I call skyrocketing. Where do they come from? Some on that site come from Amazon but I might look into it; I'm actually not sure.
I've been worried about the change in Google, which supposedly would rather give you an AI analysis of your search terms now, instead of giving you pages and pages of possible sites, which of course is where we get most of our visitors. But several things are unclear to me about their changes, which are supposedly very unpopular. First, for a while they've been doing this, burying the lists of sites under the AI synopsis of what you're looking for, and our blog visits are still up. Second, though this change allegedly happened already, I still can find the lists of sites by scrolling down like I always did, and so am not sure if they are really going to eliminate the lists of sites altogether as I'd read. And finally, does this change lead to users like me switching over to another engine, like DuckDuckGo? In my case, not yet, but I'd certainly consider it. Google would be stupid to lose all those customers over eliminating a good thing that was the source of all their success - so final question - is this for real? Long ago I listed Google as one of the three best things about the internet - Google, Blogger, and Boggle - and I meant it, and I liked how there's a certain symmetry in their names. It's kind of like our license plates, now we have FX and EE.
So, this month, 33 averages up, 4 averages down, 1 unchanged; among the dead ones, all 7 up. I measure the dead ones partly just to decide, is all this traffic just bot traffic, no relation to whether anyone is actually using the sites? But I measure dead ones partly because I'm trying to decide whether to delete them or to revive them and sometimes they can go either way. One called Turning Point, and it's about the play by the same name, and the bombing of the University of Wisconsin Madison math building in 1970, no relation at all to Charlie Kirk, but of course it got 435 hits in May and has a running average of 208, pretty good, for not having posted on it for what, about fifteen years. I could go in there, stick some pop art on there, advertise the book that play is in, and get something out of it, but I don't. I have enough trouble maintaining sites like blatant self promotion.
I've been worried about the change in Google, which supposedly would rather give you an AI analysis of your search terms now, instead of giving you pages and pages of possible sites, which of course is where we get most of our visitors. But several things are unclear to me about their changes, which are supposedly very unpopular. First, for a while they've been doing this, burying the lists of sites under the AI synopsis of what you're looking for, and our blog visits are still up. Second, though this change allegedly happened already, I still can find the lists of sites by scrolling down like I always did, and so am not sure if they are really going to eliminate the lists of sites altogether as I'd read. And finally, does this change lead to users like me switching over to another engine, like DuckDuckGo? In my case, not yet, but I'd certainly consider it. Google would be stupid to lose all those customers over eliminating a good thing that was the source of all their success - so final question - is this for real? Long ago I listed Google as one of the three best things about the internet - Google, Blogger, and Boggle - and I meant it, and I liked how there's a certain symmetry in their names. It's kind of like our license plates, now we have FX and EE.
So, this month, 33 averages up, 4 averages down, 1 unchanged; among the dead ones, all 7 up. I measure the dead ones partly just to decide, is all this traffic just bot traffic, no relation to whether anyone is actually using the sites? But I measure dead ones partly because I'm trying to decide whether to delete them or to revive them and sometimes they can go either way. One called Turning Point, and it's about the play by the same name, and the bombing of the University of Wisconsin Madison math building in 1970, no relation at all to Charlie Kirk, but of course it got 435 hits in May and has a running average of 208, pretty good, for not having posted on it for what, about fifteen years. I could go in there, stick some pop art on there, advertise the book that play is in, and get something out of it, but I don't. I have enough trouble maintaining sites like blatant self promotion.
