22Dec 2025

Cipher Mysteries is getting so many visitors from China: but why?

It’s a phenomenon that’s been growing recently: lots of Chinese addresses in the Cipher Mysteries weblogs, to the point that maybe even 20% of all visitors here are from China – from all over China. Maybe I’m missing something big? So please excuse me while I ask my Chinese visitors what they hope to see here…

各位來自中國的訪客大家好！我很高興見到你們這麼多人！請告訴我你為什麼來這裡？如果您想在這裡閱讀某個特定的謎團，請在此頁面上發表評論。謝謝你！

Posted in: Historical Research

10 thoughts on “Cipher Mysteries is getting so many visitors from China: but why?”

Pat on December 22, 2025 at 7:27 pm said:

Bots?
nickpelling on December 22, 2025 at 10:15 pm said:

Pat: possibly, but the IP addresses in the logs are from all over China, and via different providers. So I thought I’d at least give them the chance to say hello.
nickpelling on December 22, 2025 at 10:34 pm said:

Hmmm… I just filtered these events, and they all used “Win10, Chrome 139.0, Unknown [Resolution]”. So… what is this? The latest Chrome build is 143.something. Maybe Cipher Mysteries is linked on a website somewhere and one of the Chinese browsers is generating previews constantly. It’s pretty annoying, regardless. Google Webmaster Tools thinks they’re all fake, so it’s only StatCounter that’s fooled, alas.
D.N. O'Donovan on December 23, 2025 at 3:04 am said:

I had the same happen and wondered what I’d said i ‘Hawthorn and Rose’ had created such wild excitement across China. 🙂

Try checking whether your account settings with Statcounter have ticked the newish- box ‘ignore bots and crawlers’

Hope your Christmas is unruffled.
Philip Neal on December 23, 2025 at 10:36 am said:

I have had this too, Statcounter flooded with masses of hits from China and Chinese speaking countries on my Eohan site. Maybe it is something to do with AI.
nickpelling on December 23, 2025 at 1:05 pm said:

Diane/Philip: Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t mention even a single hit from China for weeks, so it looks like an oversight from StatCounter.
Pat on December 23, 2025 at 10:00 pm said:

Glad to hear you solved this mystery.

Merry Christmas and a Happy 2026 to y’all!

https://imgur.com/G0L3OL3
Pat on December 23, 2025 at 11:04 pm said:

Oops, I forgot imgur isn’t available in the UK any more… here it goes

https://ibb.co/ZzgwMN94
Peter Mösli on December 23, 2025 at 11:23 pm said:

Hello Nick,
I’m not looking for a place, which is why I’m writing to you here.
I wish you all the best and a Merry Christmas.
You know, I don’t have to spend any money anymore, my children do that now. And they only use my card.
May your After Aight not contain any chilli.
Best regards, Peter
David Morgan on December 26, 2025 at 3:38 pm said:

I think wiki built a download version for AI developers.