There’s not much that’s more maddening than for undesirable things to happen for some undetectable reason. When you can’t find the cause, you can neither do something to solve the problem nor resign yourself to live with it.
For the past five months in a row, this blog was cruising along with better than 200 views a day: in fact, this past March was a record-setter. And then along comes April, and all the air goes out of the balloon. It would be instructive to know why, because then I could fix it. But I don’t know why.
I thought it might have to do with the sudden and still unexplained drying-up of referrals from Facebook, but the loss is about twice as high as would be expected, were that the reason.
Any theories, anyone out there? Anything I’m doing wrong, that I ought to stop doing? Is it Joe Collidge who has chased people off? I wouldn’t put it past him.
I’m baffled myself, being a newbie visitor who checks in a couple of times a day. But pleeeeeze don’t evict Joe Collidge. He’s one of my favorites!
I can’t really explain it either, but there have been a few small clues to me, not only about this site, but others as well. When I start to log on, a pop up appears asking if I wish to unsubscribe. This happens more than once a day. It never happened until about a month ago. On some websites, the page is simply cut off in the middle and a message says “page cannot be displayed”. Scullduggery is going on for some reason and from some unknown source. It is very annoying, but I don’t know to whom to complain.
I just can’t figure out why anyone would bother to censor me. Even at their best, my Facebook referrals, if they were all represented by real people, could all fit into my living room, as long as they weren’t playing with hula hoops.
Even now on Facebook, I can still find posts that make me, by comparison, sound like a wishy-washy country-club Republican moderate who hides under his desk whenever anybody wants to ask his opinion on any issue. Hmm… I think I’ve just defined the GOP. Anyway, you’d think the censors would go after them first and leave me till much later.
It’s probably not targeted at you. If there is, indeed, something going on, it is triggered by keywords or phrases analyzed into a profile of who you are, what your blood stands for, etc. You don’t wave around the mark of the beast, Lee, and that is unfashionable to many in today’s world.
Fewer people have good taste lately. Personally, i’m overwhelmed with bad news presented in even worse ways. I suspect all the talk about WWIII is, temporarily, pushing people to prepper sites, most of which are lame to the informed anyway. Also, I notice that other sites, especially Youtube, is loaded with comments from leftist trolls, drowning out the otherwise normal people who argue with them. Maybe it’s something in our water supply, or geoengineering, or Chinese imports, or the last snow that took 2 weeks of daily sun to melt. Anyway, I’d be very unhappy if you were not, well, happy. Be happy – you’ve still got us, er ah, two of us – thanks Phoebe – lol.
I suspect that Erlene is onto something. I know that the search engines seem to favor liberal sites. I’ve also seen the unsubscribe thing pop up and I don’t have any idea why.
The entire Internet is based upon referrals, at one level or another. The alchemy which governs all of this is amorphous and inscrutable. It is ripe for manipulation and, considering the mindset that governs so much of the youth-dominated tech sector. A lot of these people have never even considered the possibility of something Higher than their God, which is technology itself. When they come up against a question of ethics they have only their pagan devotion to the earth. This is Baal worship writ large.
Perhaps they are messing with you, Lee. Of much greater likelihood, they may be simply “adjusting” their algorithms in such a manner that mentions of Jehovah, Yahweh or the One True God place you at a disadvantage in the search engines.
As I write this, I am in a conference room with a bunch of techies, listening to a lecture about some ultra-expensive piece of hardware that will be obsolete in a few years. I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only believer in the room. The vibe of the room is the tissue-paper thin politeness so common in our day.
This is our world, this is the world of the Internet. Instead of dealing with a loving God and Provider, the tech world deals with the binary logic of machines. I am convinced that the near hegemony of computers in our world is robbing people of their humanity. It’s no wonder that the Internet is not friendly to causes which run at odds to the atheistic mindset that dominates the tech world.
I don’t get an unsubscribe notice…..I get the old “page is not available”. The ISPs knuckle under to gov’t pressure if they want to stay in business so they probably have to block access to a lot of sites.
Geo. Orwell’s 1984 gives much insight. We’re going to hell in a handbasket!!
Saints must pray because ONLY prayer changes things.
Why in the world would anyone bother to block access to this site?
It’s not actual blocking. I could be wrong, but what I suspect is that search suggestions may be at the core of it. If you type in a phrase, the search engines will make a suggestion based upon the letters you’ve typed. The heck of it is that the search suggestions can manipulate traffic, inadvertently, or perhaps deliberately.
I know that if I type in certain keywords, which are not PC, the search suggestions are slow in coming, if at all. It could be that this site contains words, or patterns, which label it as non-liberal and therefore unacceptable to the leftist mentality at places like Google. That alone could slash your traffic.
I don’t know enough about Facebook referrals to make any intelligent suggestions, but I suspect that you may fall under some algorithm which restricts or eliminates referrals
The Internet is a very powerful tool, and the political views of its major players are bound to have an effect on traffic. Hang in, Lee. You are serving a good purpose and this too shall pass. In the meantime, I’d look for someone that consults in these matters. There may be things you can do to lessen the effect.
It’s all a total mystery to me.