Are "views" numbers largely influenced by robots?

[Emulator]

I was interested to see the rate at which the "views" numbers increase for various postings. The type of content, its breadth of interest etc..

Some of the older postings with fundamental topics are in the hundred thousands.

Topic seems to have the biggest influence and it is interesting to visit the Robot page (I see there are 16 active at this moment). Click on "Users Online Now" and the Robot column to see the subjects. Many are examining quite old postings without recent entries. What prompts them to visit such postings? Is it a query on Google or just random?

 

[Nifty]

Great points and questions!!!

Search Engine (SE) robots / spiders crawl links based on a lot of various reasons based on their algorithm. Usually the easiest answer is that the spiders are looking at:

1. Page / thread title: If the title has good keywords, this helps the spider navigate the links. This is one reason why we love keyword dense titles. Example: "Please HELP!" isn't as good for SE's (or people) as "Canon i560 printhead clogged - magenta plugged"
2. Links to pages: If a thread / page has been linked to from other pages (on, but especially off-site) then the SE's will crawl the page more.
3. There are probably a million other factors, but most are hidden, so we're just left to guess why they do what they do.

(BTW, I moved this to the feedback section of the site since it's a great site-wide topic!)

 

[Emulator]

I have been watching the -
A basic guide (see post #1) to setting up ARGYLL CMS profiling on your computer
posting, which has drifted to Recent Posts page 6, soon to be 7..

Over the last 6 days it has had 34, 45, 42, 39, 17, 32 viewings and is now at 14,343 in total. There has not been a new posting on it since 18th August. The reference to ARGYLL is I think causing external WEB searches to visit.

 

[CakeHole]

Skynet just wants to learn what funny words are before it decides to kill you, all perfectly normal

Edit: I wonder what would happen if Nifty banned them? Would they then hunt him down

In all seriousness though what is likely happening in the main is its just a web crawler looking for information with an algorithm to concentrate on long posts and threads, if you watch the recently searched images and robots that is what is causing a lot of it, if you then look at the threads most are 5 pages or more. Its even more likely to happen if the thread has third party links in it or many many images hosted elsewhere. Thats what search engines (which is what these bots basically are) like.

 

[Emulator]

But what is the objective?

 

[CakeHole]

I do not think there is an objective unless you believe the Skynet theory. Its just a bot that sits there and has programming telling it to look out for large files (in this forums case mainly image uploads) or long threads.

I spose the closest thing to objective maybe image recognition, IE if the words "Empty Cartridge" appear in a thread many times (which obviously in some long threads it would) and then there are images of Empty cartridges it learns (not literally more image recognition again) what an "Empty Cartridge" is.

The new thread in the Canon forum today with scanned images of printer head uploads the bots are going to love if it gets longer than a single page.

Its no different to how google search started, you type in say "Dog" and then it watches what most people click on to "learn" (recognise) what "Dog" actually is.

 

[The Hat]

Yes and some dogs are really bitches…

 

[CakeHole]

Yes and some dogs are really bitches…

Thats some other search engine you have been visiting @The Hat one the Mrs better not catch you on

Incidentally after what i said i log on tonight/this morning and what do i see......

Spooky how that guess is coming true

 

[3dogs]

My version is this:

I post " toast"and when I log in next australian retailers offering toastrs in the side bar.
Go to a site that has anti robit code access and post "f**t" next time I log in there are no ads for toilets, toilet seats or laxatives!! Simple, keep the bloomin things OUT.

 

[CakeHole]

I do not think they do any harm myself, if we were all worried then the simple solution would be do not look at "toast" "dogs" or upload images on sites like this. Some are paranoid about being tracked by what they search etc which is kinda understandable, but when it comes to pictures of a printer or printer related items i do not think anyone should worry enough to don a tin foil hat.

PS: adverts i know nothing about, i could be offered anything from toy cars to god only knows what when i think of all my years on the internets. i dont see adverts regardless i have adblock for those annoyances, so they never get a click from me and they can serve them (or rather try) all they wish.

What annoys me more than anything about searches and tracking etc etc is cookies, i dunno who decided to call them cookies but they are more like pigeon poop all over your computer. Once you have cleaned up the damned pigeons come back to take another poop.