That Alliance Party post and the incredible stats.

Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw (centre) backs an Irish Language Act

Last night I wrote a post about the Alliance Party and its support for an Irish Language Act, contrasting this with its earlier position when it rejected the demand for an Irish Language Act.

There is a stats facility with blogspot and then enables the owner of the blog to see how many people have viewed each of the posts.

In the hours after the Alliance Party post went up it was viewed by a large number of people and then gradually that number tailed off, which is the normal pattern.

But after a while I detected something peculiar with the stats, not for the post about the Alliance Party and an Irish Language Act but for posts stretching back as far as 2010 and covering all sorts of issues, including politics, parades, protests, culture, identity, broadcasting, arts and museums.

After comparing these stats with the average normal level of views for very old posts and noting the level of viewing as well as the number of separate pages viewed, it seems that a small group of people have spent a significant amount of time over the past 24 hours reading through the older posts on my blog.

It is the first time that this has ever happened on such a scale since I started the blog and it ended as suddenly as it started.  It may have been totally unconnected with the Alliance Party post but on the other hand there might be a connection.  Coincidence or not, who can say?  And why would a small number of people trawl through so many posts?  Three thousand additional page-views in a 12 hour period, most of them during the night, is unusual.