Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won't increase my views.

Even a flashy splatter rainbow image like this won’t increase my views.

Site Stats fluctuate all the time but I doubt that I am alone in noticing how the number of views of my blog posts has plummeted over the past week or so. In fact I know I am not alone because other bloggers have raised the issue on the WordPress forums.

Responses from the WP team suggest possible reasons are:

The first two do not apply to this blog but the third sounds like a probable reason. Google’s old interface meant that you saw where the image was imbedded but this is no longer the case. I used to get a lot of hits simply because people were searching for a picture and chanced upon my blog. My most popular post, for example, is still a short poem by Ivor Cutler that generated a lot of traffic simply because I used a photograph of a brick wall. (Why so many surfers are looking for photos of bricks and mortar is an intriguing mystery in itself!)

It’s a shock it see my stats looking so sad but , upon reflection,  think this is quite a postive thing. It means that more people are viewing posts because they want to read what I’ve written rather than stumbling upon me by chance.

It also means I have to attract readers by good writing rather than depending on flashy images. That’s the challenge I have to rise to.