Odd traffic on my wife's blog/site - any ideas?

chrisanthropic · 05-24-2011, 04:27 PM

My wife's blog/book site gets less than 25 hits a day typically.* We have a downloads page where we offer her first book for free in multiple formats.

Over the past 2 weeks or so weeks or so we've had upwards of 50 downloads of the book per day - as reported by our download monitor/wordpress plugin.* There's a few different downloads on the page, but only the PDF one is getting the insane amount of attention.

The IPs jump around all over the globe - russia, india, pennsylvania, montana, uk, canada, etc.* But none of them repeat and there's typically a few minutes between downloads (and sometimes we go 30-40 minutes between).*

Still, something about it all just seems a bit off.* Also, our traffic hasn't increased at all so they appear to be hitting the download link directly.

Again, we're giving the book away for free so we're not worried about that, just want to make sure something fishy isn't going on here.
Anyone have any thoughts of what this could be or how to look into it a bit more?

As for specs, we're using Bluehost and wordpress for the site.

AnemicOak · 05-24-2011, 04:30 PM

All it might mean is that someone posted the link on a forum or blog and people are seeing "Free" and so they're grabbing it.

chrisanthropic · 05-24-2011, 04:33 PM

See that was my first guess as well. As of right now the only place we've posted the link is in the Self-Promotion thread here. If that is the case then we'd like to know so we can say thanks wherever the traffic is coming from.

ardeegee · 05-24-2011, 04:37 PM

Have you tried googling the title of the book?

chrisanthropic · 05-24-2011, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Have you tried googling the title of the book?

Sadly I do that on a regular basis. Tried googling the exact download address as well. Other than the link in the self-promotion thread, nothing.

I mean, we've uploaded the book to demonoid and from there it hit multiple other torrent sites so those show up in google. As does smashwords, amazon, her blog, etc.

dsvick · 05-24-2011, 04:54 PM

Does your host let you see the referrer, the place where the downloading IP address came from? That should give you an idea of it if they do.

chrisanthropic · 05-24-2011, 05:09 PM

Crazy. After a bit more research it turns out that we're just getting a LOT of hits from the book being listed on getfreebooks.com. It got listed while we were moving and we didn't know. What a pleasant surprise!

05-24-2011, 04:27 PM	#1
chrisanthropic Fiend Posts: 148 Karma: 559930 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: none	Odd traffic on my wife's blog/site - any ideas? My wife's blog/book site gets less than 25 hits a day typically.* We have a downloads page where we offer her first book for free in multiple formats. Over the past 2 weeks or so weeks or so we've had upwards of 50 downloads of the book per day - as reported by our download monitor/wordpress plugin.* There's a few different downloads on the page, but only the PDF one is getting the insane amount of attention. The IPs jump around all over the globe - russia, india, pennsylvania, montana, uk, canada, etc.* But none of them repeat and there's typically a few minutes between downloads (and sometimes we go 30-40 minutes between).* Still, something about it all just seems a bit off.* Also, our traffic hasn't increased at all so they appear to be hitting the download link directly. Again, we're giving the book away for free so we're not worried about that, just want to make sure something fishy isn't going on here. Anyone have any thoughts of what this could be or how to look into it a bit more? As for specs, we're using Bluehost and wordpress for the site.

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05-24-2011, 04:30 PM	#2
AnemicOak Bookaholic Posts: 14,391 Karma: 54969924 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Minnesota Device: iPad Mini 4, AuraHD, iPhone XR +	All it might mean is that someone posted the link on a forum or blog and people are seeing "Free" and so they're grabbing it.

05-24-2011, 04:33 PM	#3
chrisanthropic Fiend Posts: 148 Karma: 559930 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: none	See that was my first guess as well. As of right now the only place we've posted the link is in the Self-Promotion thread here. If that is the case then we'd like to know so we can say thanks wherever the traffic is coming from.

05-24-2011, 04:37 PM	#4
ardeegee Maratus speciosus butt Posts: 3,292 Karma: 1162698 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: PRS-350	Have you tried googling the title of the book?

05-24-2011, 04:54 PM	#6
dsvick Wizard Posts: 2,737 Karma: 635747 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Northeast Ohio, USA Device: PRS-900	Does your host let you see the referrer, the place where the downloading IP address came from? That should give you an idea of it if they do.

05-24-2011, 05:09 PM	#7
chrisanthropic Fiend Posts: 148 Karma: 559930 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: none	Crazy. After a bit more research it turns out that we're just getting a LOT of hits from the book being listed on getfreebooks.com. It got listed while we were moving and we didn't know. What a pleasant surprise!