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Got lemons? Make lemonade. Such a hideous old cliche, all the worse for it’s truth. Having your website squeezed will leave a sour taste, but the resulting traffic data turns out to be sweet.
Now that there’s a year’s worth of data for Website In A Weekend, let’s use the stupid service attack as an excuse to take a few notes. No fancy writing today. Just the facts, with four graphs showing traffic.
Daily stats for February 2010
WordPress daily stats for February 2010
Examining the graph above:
- The red bar shows a local plateau in traffic, which is good, exactly what I was aiming at (10k hits/month).
- February 11, 2010 disaster strikes early Thursday morning. Hosting company informs of distributed denial of service “This one is as bad as we’ve ever seen.”
- Traffic stays cratered for a few days. Literally, cratered. Kind of cool when when think about it. I continue to post, but comments are turned off.
- When the server was offline completely on Feb 18, I gave it up. No articles for 3 days in a row. That’s the longest posting break since May 2009.
- Traffic starts to return to normal on February 21 when I run Julie Angelos article on being successful.
Weekly stats for last 6 months
WordPress Weekly traffic numbers week ending February 27, 2010
The weeklies show a similar story.
- There’s a definite crater through the holiday season. Note that my Alexa ranking, which is a relative index, remained steady or declined (good) during the holiday season. While total traffic was decreasing, I was gaining traffic share. Nice!
- Since the attack started half way through the week, the first week of the attack doesn’t show much decrease. The second week is pretty awful. The screenshot was taken 5 days into the 3rd week since the attack began, so there is still room for growth on that number. The rate of traffic loss clearly declined in any case.
- The traffic plateau shown for the first four weeks (i.e., January) was my target: about 10k hits/month, then twiddle the knobs to balance ROI for time invested.
Monthly stats for first year of Website In A Weekend
WordPress Weekly traffic numbers week ending February 27, 2010
The monthly is where it’s getting really interesting. I’m giving you the whole year too, no secrets here.
- April is an outlier, one day of bogus traffic from StumbleUpon. Take that one day away, you would see smooth growth all the way to September.
- Starting in September (after Burning Man), I started commenting on other blogs more often. You can see the result in my traffic.
- No surprise that December is cratered. Take the Christmas Crater out, growth would have been pretty smooth.
- And here’s where it’s really interesting: despite being throttled and without even commenting for 9 days, February 2010 is already my second best month, and that’s with 2+ days left in the month when the screenshot was taken. As of February 27, 17:54 Pacific time, the February count is 8433, and it should hit about 8700 by midnight February 28, 2010.
Relative ranking from Alexa
Let’s see what Alexa has to say. Here’s the trailing month:
Alexa trailing 1 month traffic rank
- A one week decline from mid-35k to around 100k, then bouncing around at 100k. Ouch.
- On the other hand, I do nothing and I still rank right around 100k on Alexa. That’s pretty close to money for the right readership. This is good to know.
- Getting traffic back the second time turns out to be much easier. It took months to get from 100k to 40k. I’ll do that again in a week to 10 days.
Note: Alexa is very useful for relative ranking. It doesn’t correlate well with raw traffic, but that’s ok. The relative traffic is still useful.
Supposed you’re attacked, what then?
First: don’t sweat it. Seriously. If you’re running a solid operation, it’s not a big deal.
Here’s a few suggestions:
- Do something else. Literally. Step away from the computer. Go outside. Find something else to do.
- Write small articles which will load quickly. Tell your readers what’s going on, but don’t get all weepy about it. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect had the server not gone down completely on February 18, the whole 9 days would just look like a more or less ordinary “slow traffic week.”
- Have a plan you can execute very rapidly to keep your readership engaged. I have a couple of ideas I’m toying with. If it happens again, perhaps I’ll implement those.
- Don’t sweat it. These things happen to everyone. Even Google gets hacked.
What about you?
Do you have a plan in case of attack?
What about other internet emergencies, are you prepared?
Let’s talk it over!
I haven’t experience this yet, and I wish I won’t… I was really wondering what’s happening on this site, until you informed us that there’s a DOS. You mentioned on your previous post that you’ll explain how to use Alexa, and I’ll be glad if you really will. I really don’t understand about my Alexa stat… Maybe I still have to wait until they update every blog stat.
.-= Cebu Tech Blogger´s last blog ..iControlPad for Jailbreak iPhone =-.
Bert, use Alexa the easy way: lower numbers are better, don’t worry about what the number means. Watch for trends instead.
I do have a some notions for a long article on Alexa (and other tools), but these articles really do take a long time to write, like a several hours at least. They have to be accurate. I’ll get something out sooner or later.
Thanks for reading along.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: How’s Your Blog Traffic Lately? =-.
Yeah I’m a bit aware of the numbers… I think I have to right more targeting readers from western countries, which really need more effort. I am also looking at Alexa trends, I just don’t know where they get the data… It’s almost different compared to Google Trends.
.-= Cebu Tech Blogger´s last blog ..iControlPad for Jailbreak iPhone =-.
I might be able to help you with that.
Interested in writing on article on “Blogging in Cebu”?
Looks like you have an active community there.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How Julie Became Successful Without Even Trying =-.
Yeah sure… Yep, we have this group of bloggers here blogging on different niches. Most of the members are blogging about Cebu. We had just celebrated our 2nd anniversary last Valentines day. I realized we really have a great impact in terms of SEO for every businesses that collaborate with us.
.-= Cebu Tech Blogger´s last blog ..Update Facebook Status Via Twitter =-.
Bert, if you wrote up something in depth, with maps and pictures and profiles of local businesses, I would definitely spotlight. Or even run it as a guest post, whichever you would prefer.
You’re making history over there. Hell, we’re all making history!
Cleverly disguised as a boat load of grinding hard work…
Thanks Dave… I’ll send those promotional articles (not exactly) via email… Seems like we’re off-topic here from the DoS attack…LOL
.-= Cebu Tech Blogger´s last blog ..Update Facebook Status Via Twitter =-.
For some reason, the comment I left on here via my phone (whilst bathing the children :oops:) didn’t show up so I’m trying again via the PC.
I just wanted ask for some more details on what a DoS attack is and if it is something we all need to be afraid of? I did a web search and ended up with so much information about it, I didn’t know whether to be confused or terrified ;)
Thanks :)
Eleanor
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Found: My Elephant. The Pre-Writing Challenge =-.
Basically, keep your WP blog up to date, and don’t worry too much about it. There really isn’t much any of us can do.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How Julie Became a Published Writer (And you can, too) =-.
By ‘up to date’ do you mean making sure we always update it when a new release comes out? Is the same true with plugins?
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Legislation for a weapon? You can help! =-.
I like to wait a couple of days, just in case, but yes you should be planning to update very quickly once new releases are issued.
I get excited over 1000 visitors a month. Actually, I get excited over any visitors any time. I’m fairly simple that way.
Btw, I did read all of your attack posts in my reader. No sense coming by a slow site and irritating myself – kinda like going into Walmart, it’s never fun. Now, I know that just made your day. ;)
I wrote them for you, Anne!
Ok, for everyone following along in RSS…
I figured even though it was slow for loading and commenting, the RSS feed still worked, and that would be a great way to keep people up to date.
That is, being down, but not out!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Carlos Throws Down, and Closed Means Closed. Yep, the Week in Review =-.
Looks like all the charts scared everyone away!
Interesting.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How a 9 Day Denial of Service Attack Affected Blog Traffic =-.
I am really interested in what your strategies are to keep up reader engagement during an attack. I look forward to hearing about it.
Also, just to be clear, was this attack directed at you or Bluehost? Were other Bluehost users affected too?
.-= Carlos Velez´s last blog ..Pre-Writing Challenge Update: Week 1 =-.
It was directed at someone else hosted on the same server that I’m hosted on.
I committed to posting snackables to keep the RSS readers engaged.
Things went well until the server went down completely, then I just lost interest in the whole process.
If it happens again, I’ll prewrite a week’s worth of content on Google Docs, then schedule it. It was really hard to write, an editing round trip took over 5 minutes.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: How’s Your Blog Traffic Lately? =-.
It’s pretty nice to know you can bounce back quickly. That’s resilience.
.-= Deacon´s last blog ..Poser Skates and Woodblock Prints =-.
No idea what I’d do technically, since i depend on wordpress to look after the hosting and security side. However, mine not being a pure “comment the latest trends” blog but dealing with longer-lasting subjects such as crises past and present I can still keep my research going and prepare for more posts in the near future. Like a Sunday paper cartoonist who doesn’t sketch the latest on Saturday but has a few prepared in advance.
.-= CrisisMaven´s last blog ..Economic Musings II: The Euro as a Basket Case =-.
I generally do that as well, except I like keeping everything contained in WP.
There are pros and cons to that.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How to Read Your SEO Metadata Like Google (really fast) =-.