Is a new Spider gulping up our blogs?

kw: blogging, blogs, spider scanning

Dear fellow Bloggers, particularly on Blogger.com,

A few months ago I noticed a sudden surge in the number of views of my blog. My blog is pretty specialized, so I don't get a lot of traffic, usually 80-100 daily views. In past years, when I posted daily, there were more, but seldom more than 200. So I know I don't compare to bloggers with thousands to millions of daily views and many followers.

The present rate averages 240 per day. That is nice, but I wonder if it is really more readers, or a periodic partial dump via a Spider app? Take a look at the Stats for the past few days (the Week view):

That's a little unusual, wouldn't you say? Previously, the line would jigger along in the range of 2-5 per hour. That kind of traffic still exists, but is overwhelmed by a 30-view spike roughly every four hours, with lots of variability. That 99-view spike and the two in the 60 range indicate a possible third factor. But let's concentrate on the 30's. In the Month view, they rock along in the 200-300 range (boring, so I didn't snag it), and I see this with the All Time view:

This begins in 2010 because that is when Google began recording stats; I've been blogging since 2005. But except for the heavy period in 2011 and 2012, readership has seldom breached 3,000 views per month. Then in June of this year, the spiking began. At first, it wavered, but September and October seem pretty consistent. One more chart, the Now view:

This is minute-by-minute for a 2-hour period. Someone or something dumped 30 posts at 5:04 PM today. This is why it can't be ordinary readership. Those single views rocking along there are the folks who are actually reading. Sometimes I will see two or three in the same minute.

So I am interested to find out if other bloggers have looked at their stats and seen an extra spike about six times per day. Feel free to comment. If you want to send an e-mail address for further contact, put it in a comment, along with a note whether you are OK to publish the comment or not. I moderate comments, so nothing will be published until I've had a look at it. Thanks for having a look!