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https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotland
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View and visitor stats today, above, show another massive, for us, increase in the levels we’re used to. Not just one apparent spike of the kind I have seen in the past but two close together and a run of five at double or more than the usual level.
Is there a type of story hitting a chord and responsible for the spikes? Again, I’ve seen that before.
Not that I can see:
I was puzzled, deeply. Then I spotted this for the last 7 days:
What’s odd about it? Previous week, February 2 to 8th:
All of February 2025:
It’s the USA! How? Why? I have no idea.
Which cities?
Ashburn Virginia is a major hub for Internet traffic due to its many data centers, so…….?????
Please Support Talking-up Scotland at:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-talking-up-scotland
Click on the above.
Talking-up Scotland 
AI searches?
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It’s almost certainly bot traffic from data centers in Ashburn, Virginia—not genuine human interest from the US.Ashburn (and nearby areas like Sterling and Reston) is “Data Center Alley,” home to massive facilities from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft, Equinix, and others. Over 70% of global internet traffic routes through there at some point, and it’s a hotspot for automated crawlers, scrapers, and bots. This is a super common issue in Google Analytics and similar tools—tons of site owners (especially on Shopify, WordPress blogs, etc.) report sudden “surges” from Ashburn that skew stats, with direct traffic, no referrers, and even pageviews across random posts. ciwebgroup.com +2 Why your blog specifically?Timing and pattern match perfectly: Your recent post (“What is going on with Talking-up Scotland’s surge?”) describes exactly this—spikes in the last 7 days, US-heavy, no standout post, minimal referrers. That’s textbook bot behavior: they hit the homepage or crawl systematically, not via links. No organic US buzz: Searches for your blog show shares mostly in UK/Scottish pro-indy circles (X, Bluesky, Facebook groups, Reddit). Nothing viral in the US—no big mentions, news picks, or diaspora surges that would explain a blanket US flood from one tiny VA town. Your content fits bot magnets: Political blogs with timely takes (Covid Inquiry, SNP vs. Labour, health stats, nuclear stuff) get scraped by AI trainers (e.g., for models like Grok or competitors), news aggregators, SEO tools, and archive services. These often run from cheap, high-bandwidth Ashburn servers. It’s not malicious (usually)—just the web’s background noise. Real US readers would show varied locations, referrers (Google, social, etc.), and bounce around specific posts.Quick fixes to clean it up:Google Analytics:Go to Admin > View Settings > Check “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders.” Create a filter: Exclude sessions where City = “Ashburn” (or “Ashburn, Virginia”). Use segments to view “clean” traffic. Server-side:Check your host’s logs (e.g., via cPanel or whatever) for user-agents. Bots often say things like “Amazonbot,” “CCBot,” “Scrapy,” or blank. Block via .htaccess or Cloudflare (free tier has bot fight mode). If on WordPress, plugins like “WP Cerber” or “Sucuri” can throttle crawlers. Monitor:Tools like SimilarWeb or Statcounter might show the real picture better. If it persists or spikes wildly, it could be a specific scraper (e.g., an AI firm indexing indy sites)—but Ashburn points to infrastructure, not a conspiracy. Your actual audience is still there (UK-focused, loyal pro-indy readers), and the surge is just analytics pollution. Keep doing what you’re doing—the crowdfunding push in your posts is smart timing! If you share a screenshot of the traffic breakdown (e.g., top user-agents or bounce rates), I could narrow it further.
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Are people finally waking up to how important the truth is?
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Y
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John……no facility to donate via my Paypal Account?
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