The Day My WordPress Stats Went Wild

Blogging, lessons learned, rankings, writing 2 Minutes

Yesterday started like any other day, you know – woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head.

And then I checked my blog stats.

Nothing unusual, maybe 60 to 70 views by 6:00 am. That’s a fairly typical number for that time of day, and by the end of the day, I usually end with around 350-400 views.

It was then time for some cardio, and when I was finished I checked my stats again.

By now it was around 8:00, and when I saw my daily views, I thought there was a mistake. Was I looking at my weekly, or perhaps monthly views? But I double and triple-checked, and no, I was up to 550 views already.

I was admittedly a bit excited, thinking I might break my all-time high for daily views, which was around 1,600 and had happened a couple of years ago. That day had come out of nowhere, and I had never come close to it since.

I then took a shower, made breakfast, and about an hour later checked my stats again. I was up to 1,700 views.

I had picked up over 1,000 views in one hour!

Of course, I started to project what all this meant. At this rate, I would have over 8 million views for the year! I could start placing ads on my web site and just live off my blog! I was tempted to start drafting my resignation letter 🙂

I continued to check my blog throughout the day, and while the rate slowed down, the views were still increasing at a rate I had never seen before.

By the end of the day, as shown on the image at the top of this post, I had nearly 5,400 views. That was not only a record number of views for a day, it also beat, in a single day, the highest number of views I ever had for a whole week, which had been around 3,500.

I wish I could tell you it was all because my most recent blog post about vegan endurance athletes had struck a chord with people, and that it was being spread all over the internet.

Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.

For whatever reason, a blog post I wrote in June of 2018, And the World’s Largest Tire Manufacturer Is… Drumroll Please…, was the culprit. This post alone was responsible for over 5,000 views yesterday. While the volume of views certainly surprised me, the fact that it was this post did not surprise me. For some reason, this post typically has the most views every day of all my blog posts, even though it is over a year old.

I’m not sure why it gets so many views; I guess there’s a lot of people into tires?

Things have calmed down a bit today, although I currently have over 800 views with about an hour left in the day, which is more than double my normal number and my fourth-highest daily view count in nearly five years of blogging. And once again, the tire post has the most views today of any single post.

I realize that many blogs have much higher views on a daily basis than my 5,400 views, but for me, it was an exciting day. I just hope it’s not a Black Swan event, and that I won’t have to wait a few years to break the record again.

However, I’m sure that this still doesn’t match the excitement fellow blogger David Kanigan must have felt the day his blog EXPLODED. Click here to read his story.

Now that’s stats gone wild…

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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36 thoughts on “The Day My WordPress Stats Went Wild”

    1. thanks, Norah. I know it’s just a fluke, but it would be nice if some of the people viewing the post about tires would actually comment, but the post has over 27,000 views – but only 5 likes and 5 comments!

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  6. Definitely enjoy it…maybe some of the readers will stick around! Who knew there was a secret society of tire aficionados? I’ve had some odd days like that on occasion…mostly it seems to be linked to image searches on mine. People really seem to like one of the castles featured on one of my posts, as well as one of “Indiana Jones!”

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    1. thanks, Amanda. It was fun while it was going on, but it’s back to reality already. And maybe it’s really a secret society of Lego tires. I found your story about building kid’s castles, sounds like a great staycation (I’m sure you were referring to pictures of real castles, but I couldn’t find those). I also found the picture of Indy – brings back good memories of such a classic movie! Have a great day.

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  8. Great job Jim! It’s strange how these things work isn’t it? I’m nowhere near those kind of views. If I get 100 on one day I’m really happy! But one time, I checked google analytics and I had spiked to 1,350…in one day! I was floored. Still to this day I’m not sure what the hell happened. I heard it could have been some sort of spam activity, but I’m just not sure. The day after, and all days since, it’s been normal. Anyway, this blog thing is no exact science, that’s for sure! Keep up the great writing…

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  9. Congratulations 🎊🍾🎉 Jim. You are an amazing writer with great content and lots of humor. I hope to aspire to your level oone day.

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  10. That is a lot of views! Nice.

    Also, there is a chance that if it is an old post, that it could be from spam. Fortunately, wordpress can filter those out and we seldom have to worry.

    It is nice and surprising to see that spike in the charts! Hahahaha…

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