Web Design and Development
What Happens To Your Blog When You Stop Blogging?
Every now and then, bloggers need to take a break from blogging. If it is a short break, bloggers can schedule posts in advance to make sure that their readers don’t notice that they are away. But sometimes, this isn’t possible. So, what happens to your blog when you stop blogging?
Well, in our 3-week hiatus, we’ve noticed four things:
- decreased organic traffic from search engines
- fewer requests for our RSS feed
- decreased number of repeat visitors and direct accesses
- an increase in spam
The first three items on the list are to be expected. With no new content, both search engines and visitors have fewer reasons to visit. But the increase in spam was surprising.
Why Might Spam Increase?
On a day-to-day basis, this blog already received a great deal of spam. The statistics measured 100 – 130 spammy comments per day. But now, this figure is about 25% greater at 125 – 160 spammy comments, with a high of 225!
So what was causing the increase in spam? The only thing that we could attribute it to was the Top Commentator plugin.
On most active blogs with the Top Commentator plugin installed, it might take several comments to appear in the list. But on neglected blogs, or those with few comments, just one or two comments will do the trick. So this increases the incentive to comment, especially for spammers which would benefit greatly from site-wide links. And on blogs that aren’t updated, spammers might also think that their comments won’t be moderated.
Tags: blogs, comments, FeedBurner, organic search, RSS, spam, visitor loyalty19 Responses to “What Happens To Your Blog When You Stop Blogging?”
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I hadn’t thought of the top commentator thingy… That sounds very reasonable. I hope your break is over though and you come back with more insightful articles
You were doing an experiment about Stop Blogging Effect? :S
Oh no, not an experiment. But the statistics are very interesting.
Very interesting analysis, thanks or that.
So you back now?
The increase in spam certainly is an interesting phenomenon.
It seems pretty clear here that the moral of the story here is that there are many disadvantages of putting your blog on hold.
Yes, that is the overall moral. I am going to keep track of the spam and see if I notice a substantial drop as the entries pick back up.
Awwww Sheryl, you were away for a long time! I am glad you are back now..
Thanks Ben. Yes, I’ve also been somewhat absent from reading blogs as well. Everyone’s published so much new content… I’ve missed out on a lot!
@stratos & @Dennis: Yes, the break is over.
Well do your catching up now! Its never too late..
@Shirley,
You were spot on as far as your analysis goes. I suffered from all the above in the past two weeks and the organic visits came down to as low as 35 visits on a day. And the worst was the spam caused because of the top commentator plugin. I had many silly comments with a lot of keywords in the name during this period. But it did not end there. Somebody marked my blog as spam and all comments I was making on the blogs in my reading list was getting caught by akismet. I hope somebody has despamed me already else this comment will end up in your spam folder as well.
Cheers,
Ajith
I can notice decrease in my organic traffic even if I don’t update my blog for 2 days. Specially RSS feed subscriber count goes down to 50%. Spam problem is never faced by me in such ways because I’m not using top commentator plugin.
Wow, you seem to get loads of spam.
I use to have top commentators on my site, but then removed it. It seems spammers know about the flaw and abuse it to the max.
I don’t update my blog for 2 days. Specially RSS feed subscriber count goes down to 50%. Spam problem is never faced by me in such ways because I’m not using top commentator plugin.
I’m not sure how not posting frequently leads to reduced traffic. Even Grizzly Bear would argue that. With regards to the issue of spam, some top commentators plug-in come with the function to nofollow all links and that’s exactly what I’ve done on my blog.
For over a year and a half, I posted an article daily on my blog, understandinginternettechnology.com. I followed every SEO technique known to man, including Grizzle Bear’s advice and I still get only one or two visitor’s a day.
The competition to gain visibility and search engine ranking is so fierce that I have finally given up on attempting to get any traffic to either of my blogs. At some point, you just have to throw in the towel and accept defeat.
I’m quite surprise that the spam would increase. I could understand that the spam comments would be more prvelant.
But perhaps if your not blogging you’re probably not moderating, this would then certainly leave those unwanted spam comments on
Hey Sheryl,
That is interesting, I would of assumed traffic would decrease, but not the spam increase.
Interesting, I better keep my regular posts up then! lol
Yeah surely traffic would decrease and visitors would lessen. You would likely loose visitors if you’d stops posting new articles and new topics to your blog site. It would also lessen your income as reduced visitors from the site.