It's all lies

Hiya
If you are a blogger and want to up your page views, turn on the facility to allow anonymous comments. I have a post written in November 2011, it's only two short paragraphs which basically says I'm just popping in. Nothing in there which is remotely interesting to anyone, it says nothing apart from the fact that I have been busy and will be back soon.

This post is now second in the All Time highest page views with 4,417 hits. Last week it achieved 1277 page views. It is being bombarded by automatic spam bots, not people sat at a computer reading my blog, but machines which are set up to blitz any blog they can find which allows anonymous comments.

It's interesting to watch the shenanigans of  these spammers. People desperate to promote their own blog or web site will write any old twaddle, press a few buttons and off it goes zipping through cyberspace, splattering everything like a bad dose of diarrhoea pebble dashing the pan. I think that's a good analogy considering the crap they write. The simple answer to this inconvenience is to flush them away as soon as they enter the Spam box.

I could stop them dead in their tracks by activating the 'members only' button, but I won't because I know many people don't want to sign up to an account, even though it is free. I respect their choice. All I ask is that if you wish to comment as Anonymous it would be helpful to me if you include a name, real or made up, in your text.

To stop the spammers I could turn on the 'Word Verification' facility, they won't get through that, but genuine readers don't like having to faff around with it, so mine is disabled at the moment. By allowing Anonymous to comment it is important to turn on the 'Comments will be subject to Moderation', facility, if you don't you will get all sorts of rubbish littering the blog.

So, if you don't have the blockers in place, don't take your stat figures as gospel, because the little buggers will be all over you like a bad flea infestation. If numbers are important to you,  you won't be itching to get rid of them because they make your stats look good.
Toodle pip.