RS gallery hit counter advancing 500 at a time.

[sensei]

In the past week my Rubberslug hit counter suddenly started acting strangely. It will advance by the usual smattering of hits (some of them recording my own visits as I use it to help catalog my physical collection). Then suddenly it will jump up by almost exactly 500 hits. It went over 75K last November in the usual slow, dogged way (thanks everyone!) and I expected it to hit 80K around June at the rate it was moving. Then suddenly I noticed early this week that it had gone to 81K without much notice.

I began watching it and saw that there were moments when the counter would suddenly "jump." Wednesday it did so between 10 and 3. Thursday, it did it again between 2 and 5. This morning it had jumped twice overnight, going from 83144 to 84172.

Should I be worried? Does this indicate that the site is under some kind of external attack? It does not seem that any particular cel is being favored by these hits, as looking at the "Popular Items" does not show any particular one suddenly jumping up in the ranking 500 hits at a time. And a quick look at some website monitoring sites does not reveal any active blog link (though it does show that my Sasami and PPGZ sections are more popular than I'd thought.)

Or is it just a glitch in the site's hit counter? While I'm happy that the site has legitimately been visited by many of you, I'm somewhat sorry that that hit counter now has become inaccurate and misleading. While I'd have liked to hit 100K, I'd have liked to do so by fair means rather than by some artificial or accidental means.

[zerospace]

It's probably some new (or new to RS) web bot indexing pages, I'd imagine. I get hit by all of them on my non-RS site, including some oddballs, and the Chinese search engine bot, baidu, has become increasingly obnoxious with its indexing. I'm also seeing some odd activity on my non-RS site that shows the Bing bot hitting one item in my gallery several times a day. It's quite irritating , so much so that I've become tempted to ban all bots but the Google bot, which seems to be the only one that doesn't even attempt to crawl my entire site every single day!

Of course, a bot looking for attack points is always a possibility, too, but that's really hard to say. Web bots do seem to be becoming particularly obnoxious these days, and many of them are attempting to hide behind non-reversible DNS information (when attempting to reverse-DNS look up an IP address, it simply reverses to the IP address itself). On my own site, I can tell at least some of the bad bots because they hit my contact form repeatedly -- which usually indicates an attempt to misuse the form for sending out spam. Ugh!

[irmgaard]

You might want to check with star-phoenix, as well. Last night when I visited her site she had like 81700 something, and this morning when I peeked at her lovelies again she was at 82400, so she seems to be having a similar issue...

'Course I never did figure out why one of my Bleach sketch sets went from 200 something to 2000 in one week!
It eventually slowed back down to normal, though...

[sensei]

On my own site, I can tell at least some of the bad bots because they hit my contact form repeatedly -- which usually indicates an attempt to misuse the form for sending out spam. Ugh!

Thanks, Zero. I already link my gallery feedback to a secondary email account that I check only once a week or so, because in the past it was used for pornography solicitations and breast/penis enlargers. I did double-check this just now, though, and found only the smattering of spam messages, and those largely the ones I've invited by ordering things in the past (from BBC America, not XXX.badbunnies.com). Thanks for the insights. I'll keep an eye on it, but I may end up disconnecting my hit counter. I'd have liked to pass the 100K mark, but by fair means and not by accident or cyber-mischance.

[zerospace]

I understand that, sensei -- it bothers me to see bots inflating item hit counts, too. The only person who can really tell what's going on with the weird hit counts on RS is Jason, who seems to be MIA lately . I have the luxury of looking at my own stats logging (I log IP addresses, reverse DNS, what pages were viewed, the time and user agent string -- yeah, I'm nosy), so I can tell who's doing what on my site, though sometimes it doesn't do me much good!

[star-phoenix]

I don't notice my gallery moving up or down the ranks from the popular gallery rankings list. So, it looks like it is happening across the board.
I have a rather silly question. Is it possible for someone's browser to auto-reload if left on the same website?

[zerospace]

Its certainly possible, star, but generally speaking, something has to make the browser reload the page -- they usually will not do this on their own, unless explicitly told to. If you ever see pages auto reloading, it's usually Javascripting (which permits direct interaction in the browser) that's embedded in the page you're on. It should be noticeable if this kind of code is embedded is RS pages, because you would probably see the page auto reloading if left on long enough.

[irmgaard]

I don't notice my gallery moving up or down the ranks from the popular gallery rankings list. So, it looks like it is happening across the board.

OK. I had some time this morning, so I took down the hit counts of the first 2 pages of the pop gallery list. I only visited some of these galleries yesterday, so this list of both pages will have to do as a bench mark.

As of 6:36 PDT 3/25/12 :

Jenn 123628
AJ 106569
BB 101263
GG 96411
LTS 85076
MM 84352
Sen 84341
SC 84325
Ooops the next two don't have counts posted!
ST 84094
SME 84042
S-Ph 82570
BA 68108
E 66732
CE 65246


Hopefully, with this large a sample, we'll see if it's happening uniformly, or piecemeal.

I’ll try to check again this afternoon.. I feel kinda like Tycho Brahe!!!

[irmgaard]

Ha! Thought I wouldn’t make it, right! Actually…I thought I wouldn’t, but here it is

As of 12:36pm PDT 3/25/12:

Jenn 123632
AJ 106576
BB 101267
GG 96413
LTS 85080
MM 84355
Sen 84350
SC 84332
CH ?????
GK ?????
ST 84097
SME 84046
S-Ph 82597
BA 68118
E 66736
CE 65252


It’s like a stakeout….pretty dull so far. Maybe things will heat up tonight.

[sensei]

Well, here's a taste of what you missed.

Earlier this month the count was lingering around 78K, as I was speculating when it might go over to 80K. I figured at the rate it was going (about 25 hits a day) it might click over sometime this summer, maybe in time for my collection's 12-year anniversary in July or at least for the gallery's 10-year celebration in August. Then:

3/18 7PM: 80940
3/20 9PM: 82046
3/21 3PM: 82582
3/22 5PM: 83144
3/23 10AM: 84172

For a while I lingered in the "Popular Galleries" ranking just under Shadowcat , who had 84K plus a little more than me. Now this morning I saw I had gone up past SC, with 84352. That's not a jump of 500, but still 180 hits in two days is a lot more than the average of 25 a day I'd seem for a long time. While it seems to be settling down on my gallery's front (at least over the weekend), it's still odd and a little disconcerting.

[star-phoenix]

Wow, so weird.

I have been getting anywhere from 50-200 hits per day (on the higher end whenever I update) after I added my website to some search engines a few months back including Google. But, I really have not been diligent about keeping track of page views to be honest. So, I cannot really be of much help in this unfortunately.

Medical science I know. Websites . . . . I let hubby do the thinking on that one!!

[irmgaard]

Sorry I’m late! And…

As of 7:00pm PDT 3/25/12:

Jenn 123638
AJ 106580
BB 101270
GG 96419
LTS 85083
Sen 84362
MM 84360
SC 84335
CCS ?????
GK ?????
ST 84098
SME 84047
S-Ph 82599
BA 68127
E 66739
CE 65253


Maybe it‘s because it‘s Sunday? Maybe the funny stuff only happens during the weekdays.

[sensei]

How about I alert you if I see another big jump. It could be (as someone suggested) that some big search engine has done a page-by-page walk through my entire collection two or three times, and now it knows what it wants to know, it will move on. But if I'm more thoroughly cyberindexed, then possibly I'll see an increased hit count. (I've been waiting for the Ghibli fans to notice that I have those seven previously unknown tests from the Miyazaki/Takahata Pippi project...)

I'm still seeing a less dramatic but steady climb. Just (10:30 PM) passed Memento Mori, the gallery that was next ahead of me on the RS list, so now all of a sudden I'm #6. Closing in on #5 now (The Last True Saiyans). Hail Sakura, the pink, the feathery, the all-powerful!

[irmgaard]

And…the clock strikes twelve, or 12:30, and the site turns into a pumpkin!


Nah

As of 12:38am PDT 3/26/12:

Jenn 123642
AJ 106586
BB 101272
GG 96422
LTS 85085
Sen 84373
MM 84362
SC 84336
CCS ?????
GK ?????
ST 84099
SME 84049
S-Ph 82613
BA 68132
E 66742
CE 65255


Since we've almost got a 24 hr snapshot, I might as well try and finish it.

Cardcaptor Sakura, Princess Tutu, Miyazaki?
Sure, I guess they're pretty popular....But
I’ll have you know I personally have visited your site on more than one occasion, Sensei, to ogle your …

Microid S!

Especially this one: http://sensei.rubberslug.com/gallery/in ... mID=329545
I imagine her dialog along the lines of:
“Is that a sclerite on your exoskeleton, or are you just happy to see me?”

[irmgaard]

Ta Da!

As of 6:36am PDT 3/26/12:

Jenn 123644 +16
AJ 106590 +21
BB 101275 +12
GG 96425 +14
LTS 85089 +13
Sen 84381 +40
MM 84363 +11
SC 84337 +12
CCS ????? ??
GK ????? ??
ST 84100 +6
SME 84050 +8
S-Ph 82625 +55
BA 68135 +27
E 66745 +13
CE 65256 +10


And there you have it.
24hrs in the life of the sites listed on the first two pages of the popular gallery list at RS.

Only one of this group updated during this time, Guardians of Good, and it seems that JWR’s observation that not many hits come from updating new cels, is holding true here. Sensei is well ahead of the average, but not so much as Star -Phoenix, although 55 is a lot less than the 170 difference (82400 to 82570) from the previous day. Which is very close to that 180 figure cited by Sensei…

Well….it doesn’t show any terribly exciting numbers. Five of the hits each of these sites got were from me, looking at their hit counts.
RS and AB are both sleepy on Sunday it seems.
I think I’ll try to work in another peek sometime today…or maybe tonight, just to see if there's some big change. But I won’t spam up this thread if there’s nothing interesting to see.

It's clear that something odd was happening; but, maybe now all the excitement’s over
--or it’s like when you take your car to the mechanic, and then it chooses to stop making that funny noise…