SnapBot?

anyone else hit by this bot?

[vdoyl]

IP range: 66.234.139.x

66.234.139.218 - - [01/Jun/2006:07:33:57 -0400] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 181 "-" "Snapbot/1.0"

I've searched the web, but did not find much information.

[stapel]

Everything I can find says this is a bad bot. You might want to ban it by name and/or by IP block in your .htaccess file.

Eliz.

[tiori]

It's been running most of my sites for several days. Where did you get the info that it is a "bad bot"?

[bumpaw]

I have Snapbot/1.0 on one site and Snapbot/2.0 on another since June 01, 2006. Both are using the same IP range. Would this block them?

[3]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} ^Snapbot$
RewriteRule .* - [F][/3]

[Connors]

Why ban a crawl from a potentially hot new search site? This is probably originating from the new Snap, an IdeaLab (same people who made GoTo) site that has some interesting features, and it just could catch on. I'd hate to not be in their index.

[stapel]

From which aspect of the known history of this bot and this IP block do you conclude that this old pattern signals a "new" search engine?

Please reply with details. Thank you.

Eliz.

[Connors]

I took the word SnapBot, and guessed that it might be coming from a site... named... snap! So, I checked. Indeed, there is a search engine there (long ago, Snap was a search/ISP). Same name, new people. So, I read the about, and see that it is the same IdeaLab that launched GoTo.com. Even if it's an old pattern, doesn't mean they couldn't be successful, and I wouldn't go locking myself out of a new potential new search site on some feeling that it may be bad.

[bumpaw]

If they were legit you wouldn't have to dig to find about them. The link would be in the log entry.

[Connors]

Just because they haven't thought to make a more informative UserAgent message doesn't mean they're not legit. As I recall, a certain company this group created sold for 2 billion to Yahoo. I'd certainly be interested in their next thing.

They're hosting a contest over there on how to make them more popular. Why don't you go over and suggest that they put more info in their UserAgent.

It's funny, I know about them for among other reasons, searches on SnapBot are leading to my site. I publish my referrer log, after taking out most browser user agents as a sort of spider-spotter app.

[NanoChild]

As far i can see, Snapbot/1.0 dont crawl any of my pages restricted in robots.txt, so i look like the robot are a good one...

[Pfui]

There's a detail-rich thread about SnapBot here [webmasterworld.com], in the "Search Engine Spider Identification [webmasterworld.com]" forum.

From my experience with SnapBot, it's a pest plus it provides zero benefit. To each his/her own about blocking it but here's my Rule of Thumb about blocking any robot:

If I don't know who they are, what they're doing, and/or what they'll do with MY data, they can't have it.

SnapBot doesn't get it.
(In more ways than one.)