500 Million Page Views? Really? Cloudy Nights, Come Off It!

Please bare with me as a rant, but I gotta say this..

I just saw the Cloudy Nights post where they claim they’re getting over 500 million page views a year. Yeah—half a billion. I had to read that twice, then I did what any sane person with an analytics background would do: I checked.

I ran their domain through Moz, SimilarWeb, and Ahrefs. Folks—it’s not even close. Unless you’re counting every single bot, crawler, and indexing spider from here to Alpha Centauri, the real traffic is a fraction of that. I mean, it's not even in the same time zone as reality. Either they’re deliberately inflating numbers or they don’t understand how traffic metrics work. Either way, it’s laughable. They only posted it in their forums but gave no one the ability to reply. Oh but they did get 54 "likes" from members - wait, where's the half a billion people? Sha! (screenshot below)

Now they’re sprinkling Google Ads across the site like that somehow won’t make it look even more like a Frankenstein relic from the late ’90s. As if the search flood control, broken image formatting, and inconsistent navigation weren’t already enough to drive someone insane. Adding low-rent banner ads is just the cherry on top.

I’ve spent years watching that forum slowly rot into a bloated mess held together with duct tape and nostalgia. This latest move just confirms it: it’s not about the community anymore—it’s about scraping a few pennies out of an aging platform while pretending it's still 2005.

That’s why I’m here. Found ScopeTrader through Starfront (SFRO), and it feels like stepping into the fresh air after being trapped in a server room full of CRT monitors and stale egos. No bloated ad stacks, no traffic lies, no nonsense. Just clean design, and a budding community that isn’t gaslit into thinking Google AdSense is a good look.

Cloudy Nights can keep its fake stats and autoplay future. I’m done.

I get that they're trying to squeeze a few bucks out of their site—who isn't? But Google ads? That’s like wallpapering your house with coupons. And those traffic numbers? Let’s call it what it is: ‘website activity.’ Counting every page turn and bot crawl like it’s the Macy’s parade. The industry's not that big, folks. - just my .02 cents

I noticed today that Cloudy Nights now has a full-screen pop-over ad takeover. Yikes, that’s a bit much, folks! Surely there’s a better way… ahem ScopeTrader.

Cloudy Nights is currently down for system maintenance - looks like they are upgrading a few things. Let's hope for something great!