Is Big Brother Watching?

Gov .gov hits to my site

[stevegreen]

Ok, let me start off saying that I am naturally a little paranoid and tend to worry about everything. With that said: I have a new york city real estate website, with a PR of 3 and I have been averaging about 100 hits a day. I notice that over the last 3 or 4 weeks I have been seeing alot of .gov visits. Almost 3 or 4 visits a week from new york city police dept. and several from nyc.com nystate.com domains. Now my common sense tells me that there is probably some police officer or other one of the many government workers out there looking for an apartment, I mean after all it is a real estate site and it come up high in google so anyone searching for real estate will likely see it. But of course the paranoid part of me worries. One of the NYPD visits came in on a Sunday which me believe that this is not an "official" visit but more of a personal one being a Sunday. Anyway, just curious as to what you others think about alot of .gov visits. Also curious if its normal, do others also have these kind of hits?

[ken_b]

Hi stevegreen;

First, welcome to WebmasterWorld!

probably some police officer or other one of the many government workers out there looking for an apartment,

Yup, probably. And maybe even telling coworkers about your site, leading to more visits.

[As a complete guess, I suspect that if the visits were part of some official "investigation" they might try to hide the source]

Relax. :)

[stevegreen]

Ken, yes you are probably right. I never did think of that "if the visits were part of some official "investigation" they might try to hide the source" - Its funny though, the hits show up in my stats as an "unresolved domain" but the IP address does appear and i can see who its registered to through urchin. I immagine that the government does hide the IP addreses on their investigative computers.
I know firsthand how government workers are, ptobably some employee surfing the web using police computers on their lunch break. A friend of mine tells me he gets .gov hits almost daily. That would drive me nuts! I am going to try to stop looking at the ip stats from here on, because if I ever saw something like FBI.gov I wouldnt sleep for a week. I think its time to increase the dose of my Prozac now........