OK, What's Up?
Half of the people who visit my shop do so as a result of a Google search or from a Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest link. I get some from Yahoo, LinkedIn and some other random referrals. The other half come direct via a URL to my main page or my blog page. I mentioned in a previous post that I get a pretty good number of international visitors. It’s pretty cool that people around the world can visit my shop and read my blog.
On a disturbing note, ninety percent of my international visitors are from China. I like China. I’ve been there. The people I met were all nice and I felt very welcome. These visits are from the same three cities in China. I don’t know anyone from these cities. These visitors represent half of my total visits. The last digits of their IP addresses are different each time. The issue is that they don’t browse. They land on a page and leave, just one page each time and it’s random. They are not coming via a search engine. Where are they getting the URL for these pages? Why are they coming at all? They come many times a day.
I talked to my domain host. They looked at the analytics for my site. They agree that it doesn’t make sense but they said there is nothing they can do about it. They encouraged me to read a link about security. I did. I already have two-factor authentication. All of my data is encrypted. I frequently change my password. That’s what their security recommended. They did agree to “watch” my site but I doubt they will worry about it much.
My web guru said it’s probably bots. OK, fine, but why are the bots visiting my site.
Those that know me know I’m a worrier. I feel like I’m under attack, like people are hiding in the bushes throwing mud balls at me. I’m not going to die from a mud ball attack. It’s not that I’m paranoid, it’s like my sixth sense is warning me to be aware, to do something, I just don’t know what to do.
Is this some kind of payback for the tariffs? As far as I know, there are no tariffs on wooden bowls made by American crafts people. This whole thing is silly. I really should be worrying about something more important like global warming or the environment.