bots

[WIREMAN]

wtf is a bot....why the fuck are they always listed as being here google....yahoo....bing........do they count as views?.....just wondering why these people or bots are watching this site???

[WIREMAN]

ok this was a kinda test....i see 27 views in 40 mins....wtf is up....they gots to b bots or what?
now i see a"google feed fetcher" wtf is that???

[Doreen Peri]

All the search engine views are not bots. They are views by search engine users. We've been zapping approximately 5 bots a day which register, somehow getting past the security puzzle in the registration... some of which actually post and I have to delete the posts.

Bots are EVERYWHERE on the internet. They are programs written by hackers who are usually advertising something to sell.

We would have fewer bots here if we upgraded the software, but there would always be some coming through. There's no way around it. The programmers get more and more sophisticated and create ways to get past the security features, even when security features are up to date.

My bad that the software is not up to date. James (neologistic) has offered to upgrade it for me. He is our tech person. I don't do the tech stuff. But he needs my help during the process and I have been putting it off for over a year. We'll get to it eventually.

We should be happy that the search engines which show as "online" at the bottom of the page are yielding views to our posts. This means people are using the search engines and finding and reading the posts. Many people are lurkers and only read, never register, never post.

[Doreen Peri]

What is Google Feedfetcher? It's a google tool. Read more here.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 8852?hl=en

[Doreen Peri]

"wtf is a bot"?

It's a program, not a real person. Again, the search engines shown at the bottom of the page are NOT spam bots. It just shows which search engines are being used to access the site. Spam bots will be the odd names you see here from time to time which post ads with links in them to sell something. These are applications/programs designed by people to act like spiders on the web and infiltrate websites, register on them, and post their spam.

[WIREMAN]

oh at the bottom it says google bot.....yahoo bot.....bing bot.....thats not a bot ok....i trust ur knowledge doreen....i was really kinda wondering bout all the hits so fast....cant be real users, who or whats up with that?

[Doreen Peri]

oh at the bottom it says google bot.....yahoo bot.....bing bot.....thats not a bot ok....i trust ur knowledge doreen....i was really kinda wondering bout all the hits so fast....cant be real users, who or whats up with that?

It means the search engines are applications/programs/bots which PEOPLE are using to search. So let's say someone searches for "Bukowski" using google or yahoo or bing, the search engine applications (which can be called bots since they're not human), lead the HUMAN PEOPLE to a list of links and some of those links might lead to posts on Studio8 where someone typed the name "Bukowski."

Bots are like spiders. They are web programs which crawl the web. So google, yahoo, and bing all crawl the web, but they are NOT programmed to do that automatically. Human beings need to type some search terms into them to give them the command to search.

On the other hand, there are applications/bots which people have created deliberately to hack into the registration system and post on Studio8. These are not people... but they will appear with screen names and some of them may post advertisements with links. (SPAM) and I delete those.

So, please don't be concerned about the search engine names at the bottom of the page. All that means is that there are real people using those search engines and landing on Studio8. Be happy we have people searching using the search engines to land on Studio8 to read posts here.

I'm sure there's someone with more technical knowledge than I have who can explain it better. I did the best I could for now. Maybe I'll try to get in touch with neologistic (James) and see if he has time to answer you better.

http://www.metamend.com/search-engine-bots.html

[Doreen Peri]

Bottom line is this:

SPAM BOTS = we don't want them! They are devious programs designed by hackers to come to sites like this and advertise their wares by posting links. This is called SPAM or unwanted advertising.

GOOGLE BOT, YAHOO BOT, ALL SEARCH ENGINE BOTS =
We DO want them. They are applications/bots which are controlled by real people who type in search terms. Search Engine Optimization is BIG BUSINESS. Websites want as many search engines as possible to access their sites in order to get more traffic from real people.

I hope this helps.

[WIREMAN]

awesome explanation....thanks

[Doreen Peri]

Cool! Glad I finally was able to explain it. You're welcome.