Robots online? What?

[Phantomix]

When you look at "members online now", it says the members, guests, and robots. What are the robots?

 

[dirkclod]

 

[Zerone]

The robot count is created by what are commonly known as web-crawlers, web-spiders, or just bots. They are usually created by search engines (google, yahoo, bing, etc) to update their search indexes and provide you with reasonably accurate and uptodate results. The bots are constantly crawling the web and although you can stop then crawling your own site if you wish by using "robot.txt" codes etc, they don't do any damage and actually help to propagate a new web-sites.

 

[msinger]

Internet bot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[NotARubicon]

"bots" are also used to scrape (copy) content to be used on other websites without permission, slurp up email address for use by spammers, and to probe for security vulnerabilities to hack.. So they are also used for bad things..
There are actually (approximately) 10000X more 'bad' bots roaming the web than there are 'good' bots..

 

[Zerone]

"bots" are also used to scrape (copy) content to be used on other websites without permission, slurp up email address for use by spammers, and to probe for security vulnerabilities to hack.. So they are also used for bad things..
There are actually (approximately) 10000X more 'bad' bots roaming the web than there are 'good' bots..

The OP specifically refered to the "Members Online Now" section, at which time I checked and there were 52 Robots listed and my response was to that specific query. It was not a technical tutorial on email harvesting, security vulnerabilities, key mapping, database excavation, or any other nasty which does not enter through the front door and so avoid being counted in the census.

The 52 listed were Google 14, Bing 12, Yahoo 7, Baidu 19. All of which are recognised search engine bots, the last one being the main search engine in China.

 

[DefaultIT]

Funny I just noticed that stat yesterday...and my mind went elsewhere

 

[NotARubicon]

...
The OP specifically refered to the "Members Online Now" section, at which time I checked and there were 52 Robots listed and my response was to that specific query. It was not a technical tutorial on email harvesting, security vulnerabilities, key mapping, database excavation, or any other nasty which does not enter through the front door and so avoid being counted in the census.

The 52 listed were Google 14, Bing 12, Yahoo 7, Baidu 19. All of which are recognised search engine bots, the last one being the main search engine in China.

My response was to the other comment that "bots do no harm", (or something similar...)
I apologize if my post has, in any way, reduced the quality of your life and am sorry that you had to take up so much time and energy in your response.

PS: I would not be so confident about the nasty bots not getting through the door.. Especially the ones that spoof the Agent-ID and show up as Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Baidu... Especially since they totally ignore ROBOTS.TXT as you mentioned..

 

[Zerone]

I apologize if my post has, in any way, reduced the quality of your life and am sorry that you had to take up so much time and energy in your response.