Unknown Region

When I inspect what areas of the world are reading this blog, a curious thing has happened over the last year: China has disappeared from the Blogspot’s “Audience” rankings. Hmmm? Concomitant to this event, a strange geographic notation has appeared ... it’s called “Unkown Region” (60 hits so far this month). Cummon! I can’t believe that Google (the owner of Blogspot) can’t determine from whence page views are coming!

However, since Google is wont to bend to Xi’s will, I can’t help but wonder if China’s new appellation is now “Unknown Region?”

Gotogle Grift?

I've dealt with this issue before. As readers of this blog can see, I don't see it as a money making effort ...  i.e., no ads. However, I'm not sure that all of  Blogspot's (owned by Google) algorithms realize this.

Why do I say this? Well because about ever week or so this blog gets a bonus of  a batch of obviously bot-produced hits ... usually adding 100 to 500 more hits to my normal count of 100 to 150 hits per day ... note the spikes in the above Blogspot tracking chart of this week's Fletcher's Castoria blog activity. (One would wonder why this bot doesn't spread these ersatz hits out over a number of hours instead of all at once ... not very A.I.!)

The other question is ... shy does Google give this blog all these gratis hits? Well, I can guess. I suspect that Google bot doesn't note that I have no ads on this blog. Yes, if I had ads here I would be earning more money ... but so would Google. I can understand why hundreds of other blogsters don't complain about such a royalty windfall. But I also think that advertisers on Google may not be aware that they are paying for phantom eyeball hits to t any blog that holds their paid-for messages.

Social Butterflies

(Full disclosure: I don't use Facebook or Twitter ... but I regularly use Google and Google owns Blogspot that runs this blog.).

The social networking companies are finding that their golden goose is starting to lay tarnished eggs.The EU has hit them with new regulations and big fines, and our usually clueless Congress is beginning to understand just how they have been hosing the naive American public.

We have reached an inflection point in the hyperbolic growth of this sector and I strongly suspect that a butterfly net is in store for these wild Monarchs. Here is my prediction for what's coming for them ... a mixture of a little logic and some wishful thinking:

- Opt-out button: users of these services should be able to EASILY chose that these services retain none of their personal info at all, or by information type, by age of info or by how captured. If companies violate these strictures, there should be severe liabilities.

- Users must be able to prioritize search results: oldest vs. newer, popular vs. unpopular, by country, by media type, by actual media outlets, by organization, etc.

- All search algorithms should be fully  flow-charted ... if not open-sourced.

- Alphabet (parent of Google) should be broken up into its major components.

More to come in this subject...

The Age of Fake

I have previously blogged re my suspicions about fake traffic on this blog ... see: Strange! If I were receiving ad revenue from this blog (which I am not), I would have garnered substantial ill-gotten gains. Certainly Google, who operates Blogspot, the web site hoster for this and many other blogs, does benefit enormously from all the fake traffic which I think I have noticed. In fact, were I to guess, I think that this fake traffic on my blog might have, at times, increased the hits here by a factor of three ... all benefiting Google.

Now Google has sheepishly admitted that "some" of its sites have experienced fake traffic that has run up its ad revenues ... and it will be issuing refunds to advertisers who paid up based upon these inflated hit numbers ... see: CNBC Story. Far be it from me to gauge the actual size of this scandal ... but IMHO it is a scandal which will take quite a bit of "esplaining" (and maybe even some Congresional investigations) to rectify things (if possible) ... for I strongly suspect such sleezy practices may be industry-wide.

Shades of VW's (and others') auto-emissions scandal?

No Ads

Kind readers, you may have noticed that this blog has no advertising. This is on purpose. Early on (in 2006) I did allow Google to insert its hucksterisms into this blog, but then it started offering only public service ads … and then nothing. I think this was because I must have clicked on my own blog’s ad (horrors!) and some geek at Google thought I was trying to hype my own advertising income. I wasn’t and, as it turns out, I have never received one penny of pelf from the Blogspot people.

Later on, after this blog’s readership increased ten-fold and then one hundred-fold, the Blogspot-ers had a change of heart and offered incentives for me to return to Mad-Men land. I thought it over and decided, “No thanks. Why should I clutter up my feeble attempts to shed a little light on world matters with ads for hemorrhoid creams or mortgage refinancings?" So you now read these posts free of any commercialism and it shall remain so for as long as I can type this tripe.

And thank you for your readership.