My Brief Love Affair with China, and the Rise and Fall of My WordPress Stats

Blogging, humor, technology, United States 3 Minutes

 

I know this is what you’ve all been waiting for – an update on my WordPress stats.

Despite my lack of blogging in 2025 (a total of eight blog posts), the number of views I had set an all-time record, and it wasn’t even close.

For 2025, my blog had over 518,000 views. To put that in perspective, I had 18,000 views in 2015, my first year of blogging. That number slowly grew each year, and then it peaked in 2021 at 209,000 views. And those numbers were the result of posting every single day during that 2015-2021 period. After 2021, the views tarted to drop, and in 2024 I had 71,000 views.

So why the big jump in 2025?

One word: China.

Of those 518,000 views, 459,000 of them were from China!

And those views took place during a relatively limited time frame in 2025, as the chart below shows.

 

This chart highlights a couple of items. First, prior to September, my blog was hovering around 1,000 views per week, and then after that, with the exception of one week in October, the views started to grow, and to then explode. My weekly views peaked at the end of December, reaching 93,000 for one week! To put that in perspective, when I started blogging, it took me three and  half years to reach a cumulative total of 93,000 views. And here I achieved that number in one week.

But the above chart also shows how engaged my Chinese audience was. During the span from April to December, there were a whopping 20 comments, despite the 500,000 views (of which 459,000 were from China).

I should note that I was not alone in this experience.

The wonderful blogger Tippy noticed back in September that his blog went from getting about 100 views per days to over 2,000. And all because of China as well. Online chat boards were full of similar results.

So what caused such an increase?

My guess is that some Chinese firms were building AI software, and wanted to purposely populate their data with information that could be used for hallucinatory purposes.

What’s that mean? From Grammarly:

AI hallucinations occur when AI tools generate incorrect information while appearing confident. These errors can vary from minor inaccuracies, such as misstating a historical date, to seriously misleading information, such as recommending outdated or harmful health remedies. AI hallucinations can happen in systems powered by large language models (LLMs) and other AI technologies, including image generation systems.

So these Chinese AI tools probably wanted to have some nonsense data they could feed into their large language models to throw users off, and what better place to find such nonsense than a blog devoted to blather.

But then the drop in views was sudden and severe.

During the last week of 2025, I had over 92,000 views from China. The very next week, I had six.

I kept wondering, was it something I said? Or did the Chinese AI companies finally realize that my blog posts were beyond the realm of hallucination, and that no one in their right mind would believe a word of what they were reading if it was based on my blog posts?

So there’s the story of my brief love affair with China. After all, how could I not love someone who was viewing so many of my posts?

And there, sadly,  is also the story of the rise and fall of my blog stats.

However, to end on a positive note, it does appear other Asian countries have started to discover my blather, as I’ve recently noticed a significant increase in the number of views originating from Singapore and Hong Kong.

I wonder how long until they realize that there’s no substance at all to my blog posts, but that it’s pure blather?

P.S. Just to warn you, I plan to write another stat-focused blog based on a number in the very first chart shown above. Somehow I missed that milestone that happened sometime during 2025…

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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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58 thoughts on “My Brief Love Affair with China, and the Rise and Fall of My WordPress Stats”

  1. Thanks for the kind link. Yes, this happened to me, too, and then the views suddenly ended about the same time as for you. But I’m glad it happened to me, because one of my goals in blogging was to become famous. I also want to become fabulously rich, but I guess that will have to wait until China starts sending me a ton of money. But at least now I can say that my goal to become famous has been fulfilled. And all because of my blog.

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  2. The same thing happened to me. I thought I had suddenly achieved cult status in China. Then, when the numbers abruptly dropped, I wondered, “What did I say? Clearly, something got lost in translation!”

    I had a similar — but not quite as extreme — thing happen with Singapore not long after that.

    Now, I am back to the tiny percentage of the human population that shares my sense of humor and affinity for the weird.

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    1. seems like we had quite a similar experience!

      but perhaps writing about my stats triggered something, since so far today I already have over 16,000 views, and it’s not even noon! Australia is the culprit here. And while I’d like to think it’s because of the huge impact I had during the brief amount of time I spent there, I’m guessing they are doing some AI scraping as well…

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  3. Quite a few bloggers have experienced this recently. My numbers are much smaller but I’ve been getting some noticeable spikes. Not from China though: mine have been from the US, with an assist by Singapore. Weird, isn’t it!

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  5. I have been experiencing the same thing. Tons of hits from Singapore over the last couple of months, not to mention other places where I doubt anyone or anything would understand my blog, let alone be interested. Maybe we should be entitled to some royalties. Collecting could be a problem.

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  6. WordPress allows AI models to crawl and scrape your site and content. There’s a settings button in the back of your site that is automatically set to allow this. You have to untick it if you don’t want this. A lot of people didnt know about this and are only finding out now.

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  7. The same happened to me, starting around September of last year. I went from a daily average of about 250 views per day to over 17,000 in one day! Then it tapered off in January, but is starting to increase again, largely due to Singapore & Hong Kong, as you mentioned, but also Australia and the U.S. itself. Today, for example, as of 9:00 p.m., I have 1,716 views, of which 1,537 are from the U.S. Trouble is that it makes those statistics meaningless … hard to say how many actually READ what we write.

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    1. Yes, I saw some extra views from Australia, but I was kind of hoping they might be real, although I am guessing most of them are not

      and you know me, I am fine with the extra views, even if they are fake 🙂

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      2. Yesterday my stats went crazy – my best day ever. 50,290! With 47,000 of those from the U.S.

        If only they were real. But then I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with the comments 🤓

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  8. It isn’t just WordPress that has seen a spike in traffic coming from China and Singapore. Apparently it is a global issue and it is AI scrapers looking for training data. You can go to Settings – Reading – and tick The “Prevent third-party sharing” option which is supposed to restrict your site’s content from AI training and third-party use. I did this, but I still have days where the view stats are suddenly way too high for one day – and the traffic did not necessarily all come from China!

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  9. I’ve read about this happening from several other bloggers. In all of my years of blogging, I’ve only noticed one day, a couple of weeks ago, when my numbers spiked for no apparent reason. Since then, they’re normal again. I’ll have to go back and check to see if most of that activity came from China.

    You’re like a regular Vincent van Gogh. Just wait until you pass, and your numbers will really skyrocket. People are lining up to be part of your stats. “Take a number. Borden won’t be signing autographs until this afternoon.”

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    1. maybe before I pass away, I should monetize my blog and update my will so that my wife and children will finally be able to go out to McDonalds once a week.

      side note – maybe writing about my stats has an effect. so far today, I have over 15,000 views, and it’s not even noon 🙂

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  11. When I was in China this past year, I was detained in my hotel room and did obsessively check your site but no way did I cause more than half of those views. I spend more time studying my stats than actually posting anything because I trusted that they actually meant something. I am devastated by this shocking revelation.

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    1. Thank you for helping with the boost in my stats.

      I hope you have plans to go back to China soon, and for an extended period of time.

      If that would lead to an increase in my stats, that would still mean something to me.

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