Since creating this website, I have used Cloudflare as my DNS provider. Although I do not currently have any analytics tools built into the website, I can see that they have collected some data for me.

Attached is the traffic data for my web server over the past seven days. Keep in mind that the server hasn't been running for very long. You’ll see that, between my two domains, Cloudflare has handled over 1,500 unique visitors. That number has not decreased daily, but I suspect it will soon. I personally believe most of this traffic consists of bots and web crawlers.

If you're unfamiliar with web crawlers, they're how Google finds information on the web. When you search something on Google, it references a database of keywords. Your Google search typically populates results in fractions of a second. That’s far too fast for Google to search the entire internet in real time. Instead, they maintain a massive database that's gradually populated by “web crawlers”—automated programs that traverse the web, going from one link to another, gathering data.

Nearly every contact message I've received so far has been some kind of automated or copy-pasted offer for paid services to help improve my website's search visibility. These services aim to optimize the site for web crawlers, making it more likely to appear in Google searches.

Some of these messages are advanced enough to include personalized greetings like, “Dear dim51.com team,” rather than generic spam. I don’t mind too much, as it indicates that bots have found and navigated my site. However, I have no intention of generating traffic via random Google searches, so I’m not interested in these services. That’s assuming they’re even legitimate companies and not scammers. As the saying goes: when in doubt, assume it’s a scam.

I wonder how long it will take before all the bots have indexed my site and the unique visitor count starts to taper off. I look forward to that moment, but I also dread it. It’s oddly satisfying to see the line go up on the traffic charts. I know this website has little value right now and won’t sustain this level of traffic forever, but looking at the graphs still gives me a small dopamine boost.

I also wonder how much I could earn from this bot traffic with AdSense. Even if it’s just a few pennies, it’s better than nothing. Soon, I’ll set up Google AdSense to see if I can generate a little revenue from the traffic. It’s not all about money, but I feel like I’d be missing an opportunity if I didn’t at least try. I’ll make sure to write a blog or project page about the process. That way, if I ever need to do it again, I can reference my notes.