Blog Posts Rarely Read

This year (2026) marks my twentieth year blogging. My official anniversary is September 8, with my first blog post appearing on Filter & Splice, my Blogger blog, on that date in 2006. Honestly, it doesn’t feel that long.

At the time, I was trying to blog almost every day because that was the way you were supposed to build a following online. It was a difficult schedule to keep up. I eventually moved to blogging weekly, then shifted to a couple of times a month. Because there are so many people producing so much online content, it’s nice to have some folks producing only occasionally, not adding too much extra stuff to keep up with. I very much appreciate the occasional content producers and look forward to their work precisely because of its periodic nature.

At the beginning of 2026, I noticed something interesting happening with my blog stats. I consistently ran between 30 and 60 daily views on my blog for years. If my stats ever went higher than that, I was trying to figure out why because it was so rare. In January, my stats suddenly jumped up to between 50 and 100 views per day, sometimes up to 200. Even though I had a brief dip from that when I changed my website host, my stats are now consistently higher than they ever used to be. I’ve been scratching my head about why that is. I suspect that AI may have something to do with it because AI needs a lot of original content to work well.

In addition, I have ten posts that continue to draw readers consistently over time. Most of them are how-to posts.

Three of them are about bog coats, including the most-visited post on my site with over 13,000 views: Bog Coat Revisited X 3

The second most popular post is How to Add Images in Musicolet App with close to 7,000 views. (As I write this post, I’m ripping some music CDs so I can add them to Musicolet.)

Other how-to posts include Retr0briting a Tub Surround, How to Give Away Stuff on the Curb, and Guide to Leaving Facebook. (I would love for the Guide to Leaving Facebook to get even more traction as people find other online communities.)

There are a few wild card blog posts in the top ten, aside from my home page, which only has 1,217 views. That sounds pathetic after blogging for 20 years, but I kept a different blog, The Woo Woo Teacup Journal, between Filter & Splice and this one, which has only been around since 2014.

Wild card posts include Hey, Dude, I’m Not Sure You Understand Your Bumper Sticker, What to Do with Three Handmade Baptism Gowns, and Rereading: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I sure hope this last one isn’t being used by students having to analyze the book for English classes.

My theory about AI being behind the rise in my blog stats isn’t about these popular posts, which have been at the top of the stats for years. It’s about what’s happening at the bottom of my stats. Posts that haven’t been viewed probably since they were first posted are resurfacing in the stats. These are posts I forgot I wrote, which is a fun experience as a writer. I’m often surprised at how well past writing has held up, although some of it does make me cringe.

Over the past week, the following posts surfaced in my stats:

On the Practicality of a Weaving Degree

Noodle Packaging & Preservation

Did You Know That Flour Is Raw?

Totally random. One view each. And there were many, many more posts with one view each in my stats for this week. That’s why I think AI might be behind the spike in views.

I’m going to end this post by resurfacing three more long-lost items from my all-time stats:

“Two Broken Hips Away from Closing” from February 3, 2020

Library of Congress: The Ultimate Eye Candy from February 11, 2019

It Isn’t About Who’s Right; It’s About What Works from May 14, 2015

None of these have gotten more than 5 view since they were published. (I’d appreciate it if you could give them a little love!) That last blog post seems to have become more prescient in the past year or so.