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I recently switched my (small and ad-free) blog to https-only and I saw a sharp drop in traffic. I highly suspect that is due to various malicious robots and cr

by avian 12y ago

I recently switched my (small and ad-free) blog to https-only and I saw a sharp drop in traffic. I highly suspect that is due to various malicious robots and crawlers not handling either https or redirects from http to https correctly. For instance, attempted comment spam fell to almost zero after the switch. Considering that at least part of the ad clicks comes from robots (there was a recent post about that on HN), it might be that some of your lost revenue was due to that effect.

Donzo 12y ago
According to my CloudFlare analytics for the last 30 days (I draw on them because they try to measure bots): 2,230,909 Page views 2,094,927 regular traffic 126,337 crawlers/bots 9,645 threats While there certainly are a lot of automated visits, they are still a fraction of what appears to be legitimate traffic. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that CloudFlare blocks or challenges (edit: malicious) bot traffic, so I doubt that is the spoon that is stirring the pot. I am not alone in reporting this: https://www.seroundtable.com/https-google-adsense-19035.html https://www.seroundtable.com/https-google-adsense-19035.html It is a serious issue, one which I'm sure is hindering https adoption around the web.
bad_user 12y ago
I also switched my small and ad-free blog to https-only and I haven't noticed a drop in traffic. On the other hand, even if I had, I wouldn't have cared. I'm proud to contribute to a saner Internet and it does matter even for small blogs because I noticed networks that inject content in websites - I don't know how this practice evolved in the US, but a couple of years ago while traveling there the Wifi networks in the 2 motels I stayed at were injecting ads in the websites I was visiting. I found that to be extremely distasteful. For me HTTPS is a way of signing my content. Shameless plug - https://www.bionicspirit.com/ https://www.bionicspirit.com/ :-)

by avian 12y ago

Donzo 12y ago

According to my CloudFlare analytics for the last 30 days (I draw on them because they try to measure bots): 2,230,909 Page views 2,094,927 regular traffic 126,337 crawlers/bots 9,645 threats While there certainly are a lot of automated visits, they are still a fraction of what appears to be legitimate traffic. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that CloudFlare blocks or challenges (edit: malicious) bot traffic, so I doubt that is the spoon that is stirring the pot. I am not alone in reporting this: https://www.seroundtable.com/https-google-adsense-19035.html https://www.seroundtable.com/https-google-adsense-19035.html It is a serious issue, one which I'm sure is hindering https adoption around the web.

bad_user 12y ago

I also switched my small and ad-free blog to https-only and I haven't noticed a drop in traffic. On the other hand, even if I had, I wouldn't have cared. I'm proud to contribute to a saner Internet and it does matter even for small blogs because I noticed networks that inject content in websites - I don't know how this practice evolved in the US, but a couple of years ago while traveling there the Wifi networks in the 2 motels I stayed at were injecting ads in the websites I was visiting. I found that to be extremely distasteful. For me HTTPS is a way of signing my content. Shameless plug - https://www.bionicspirit.com/ https://www.bionicspirit.com/ :-)