Blog stats update: tell me this isn't AI-coordinated ...

 OK, here's another graph to go with last time's: this is hourly data at the peak of the recent surge.

• That steady 6k per hour was absolutely typical of several peak days in a row;
• The within-day spread of "locations" from which those hits came was very much as per the table I posted last time.

Given how egregiously high that "readership" was, it speaks to me of both a (prolonged) automated web-crawling episode AND one that deliberately uses "readers" spread across all those locations in a coordinated manner.  In other words, taken as a totality, it's a single "visit".

(It's subsided now, although only to daily levels that would have been rare in earlier years.  This being the case, my decision not to bother trying to harness the surge for ad revenues has not troubled me.)

You gotta admit, all this is somewhat interesting!  So I shall still be looking for an authoritative explanation.

ND