Zealbot and wierd requests

[moltar]

I have a directory where I use mod_rewrite to pull out pages out of database. When certain URL is requested (e.g. /articles/path_to_article/), rewrite parses it and passes to the script (e.g. /cgi-bin/script.pl?path=path_to_article&some_other=variables). Then the script pulls out article with that path (path is stored in mysql) and displays it. So far so good.

Zealbot comes around and request the following syntax:
/articles/path_to_article/?path=path_to_article&some_other=variables

It seems it somehow figured out my rewrite and now it tries to manipulate it somehow. It does it only for 1 article, the others are fine. Just now I scanned my logs and found ~ 8 times it came. It also passed that disease to MARTINI crawler.

Why would that happen and how can I prevent it from doing it in future?

[stechert]

Moltar and I chased this down together.

Turns out his site had a redirect to that URL and Zealbot's just following that redirect.

Cheers,
Andre