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Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? - Printable Version

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Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by jordanspringer on 06-20-2006 at 03:36 AM

This has probably been posted before, I tried searching, couldn't find it. But when you view who is online on the forums, the Yahoo, MSN, and Google icons.. what do they mean?

I'm wondering if they are bots scanning the pages to continuously add these pages to like Google/MSN/Yahoo search? meta spiders or w/e they're called... but I wasn't sure...

View Who's Online

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by qgroessl on 06-20-2006 at 03:37 AM

I think it's how they were directed to the page?

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by WDZ on 06-20-2006 at 03:40 AM

quote:
Originally posted by jordanspringer
I'm wondering if they are bots scanning the pages to continuously add these pages to like Google/MSN/Yahoo search? meta spiders or w/e they're called... but I wasn't sure...
That's correct, the icons identify web spiders/crawlers.
RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by jordanspringer on 06-20-2006 at 03:43 AM

so you mean to say when you look to see how many people are online in the fourms, about 30 people make up just search bots? thats nuts

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by WDZ on 06-20-2006 at 03:48 AM

quote:
Originally posted by jordanspringer
so you mean to say when you look to see how many people are online in the fourms, about 30 people make up just search bots? thats nuts
The number varies of course, but yeah... that's possible. :p
RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by fergofrog on 06-24-2006 at 10:57 AM

Hey that's cool, how does Messenger Plus know that Yahoo/MSN?Google directed them there?

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by Plik on 06-24-2006 at 11:06 AM

quote:
Originally posted by fergofrog
Hey that's cool, how does Messenger Plus know that Yahoo/MSN?Google directed them there?
You can generally identify them by either their useragent or IP address, so it just takes some php to indentfy them
RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by WDZ on 06-24-2006 at 08:13 PM

Yeah, my script uses a list of known IP addresses.

MyBB 1.0 uses User-Agents. I guess that's a better way to ensure all bots are detected, but then it's also easy for a non-bot to pretend to be a bot, which is kinda dodgy. :p

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by fergofrog on 06-24-2006 at 09:23 PM

That's really cool, how did you find out the bot's IP addresses? And why would a non-bot want to pretend to be a bot?

RE: Yahoo/MSN/Google Bot icons? by WDZ on 06-25-2006 at 03:22 AM

quote:
Originally posted by fergofrog
That's really cool, how did you find out the bot's IP addresses?
A bit of web research, plus some DNS lookups on a set of random visitor IPs.

quote:
And why would a non-bot want to pretend to be a bot?
Well, a bored forum member might try it as a joke... :p