What is a 'Robot'?

[Sinistral]

Occasionally I look at the number of folk currently accessing the site. Usually there are fewer members logged in than 'the rest' who aren't. The latter seem to be more purposeful, looking up specific topics, which are quite often old threads. It's no problem to get a rough total from the seperate count for 'Guests' and 'Robots'. The number of 'Robots' (mainly via Applebot, but Bing, Google, Yandex too) has increased of late. There were 4 full pages at one time today.

Current visitors

www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk

Are the hits from each of these sources coming from an unidentifiable IP address, or what? Is this Apple's new ATT anti-track feature on IPhones?
If somebody is using a secure search site like StartPage or Metager which use dedicated servers then he's shown as a Guest, not a Robot.
Sorry to ask, but this mystery has been bugging me for a while. Any answers please?

 

[VSS]

Occasionally I look at the number of folk currently accessing the site. Usually there are fewer members logged in than 'the rest' who aren't. The latter seem to be more purposeful, looking up specific topics, which are quite often old threads. It's no problem to get a rough total from the seperate count for 'Guests' and 'Robots'. The number of 'Robots' (mainly via Applebot, but Bing, Google, Yandex too) has increased of late. There were 4 full pages at one time today.

Current visitors

www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk

Are the hits from each of these sources coming from an unidentifiable IP address, or what? Is this Apple's new ATT anti-track feature on IPhones?
If somebody is using a secure search site like StartPage or Metager which use dedicated servers then he's shown as a Guest, not a Robot.
Sorry to ask, but this mystery has been bugging me for a while. Any answers please?

I think that the robots are what monitor all Internet activity to keep the algorithms up to date and make them work as accurately and as relevantly as possible. Not that I know anything about it really. Just guessing.

 

[Overlay]

Occasionally I look at the number of folk currently accessing the site. Usually there are fewer members logged in than 'the rest' who aren't. The latter seem to be more purposeful, looking up specific topics, which are quite often old threads. It's no problem to get a rough total from the seperate count for 'Guests' and 'Robots'. The number of 'Robots' (mainly via Applebot, but Bing, Google, Yandex too) has increased of late. There were 4 full pages at one time today.

Current visitors

www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk

Are the hits from each of these sources coming from an unidentifiable IP address, or what? Is this Apple's new ATT anti-track feature on IPhones?
If somebody is using a secure search site like StartPage or Metager which use dedicated servers then he's shown as a Guest, not a Robot.
Sorry to ask, but this mystery has been bugging me for a while. Any answers please?

Just had a look, Mr Applebot gets home or up earlier than me in the morning must be summink to check summink I guess, it’s way over my head whatever it is and not worthy of any further attention.

 

[csl]

Robots or ‘bots’ are determined by the User-Agent of the connection e.g. for search etc. Faking ‘bots’ is relative easy so they are checked against their IP and are only categorised as ‘Robot’ if they have passed this, otherwise they are left as ‘guest’.

 

[Sinistral]

Robots or ‘bots’ are determined by the User-Agent of the connection e.g. for search etc. Faking ‘bots’ is relative easy so they are checked against their IP and are only categorised as ‘Robot’ if they have passed this, otherwise they are left as ‘guest’.

About Applebot

Learn about Applebot, the web crawler for Apple.

support.apple.com

Thanks, CSL. Found this on the most common 'Bot' crawling about.
Guess I should have known that the growth in Robots was due to more & more strangers using smartphones to search the site.
Another indicator that shows how popular SD has become. Happy now.

 

[LuckyEddie]

This