What is Scooter?

[David_David]

What is this thing? I just found it in my stats.. I figure you must know a bit more than I. :)

I have been noticing one thing, maybe you guys can help me.

in my access_log, I notice that about every second (not all days, but it happens some) there is some IP accessing every file on my site, as well as everything I link to (i linked to a page that i was planning on making, but never did. the link is still there, its a dead link. that filename was accessed too).

Its weird, it dosen't happen often at all, but I thought it was evry suspicous. Thanks guys.

David David

[David_David]

I think I know how to permanently ban him.. asumming that only 1 digit in the IP address is changed, when you ban an IP with your .htaccess, just ban the IP

209.73.162.*

That would ban 209.73.162.41, as well as anything that starts with 209.73.162.. (i used the example IPs from a few guys who posted scooters IP).

Who is AV?

What is fast-webcrawler? i got a few hits from them, only like 5 though :)

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Thanks

David

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, David_David.

>What is this thing?
Scooter is one of several Alta Vista spiders.

>Who is AV?
AV is Alta Vista [altavista.com], one of the major search engines.

>I think I know how to permanently ban him..
No, you don't want to ban Scooter, or FAST-Webcrawler either, David.
See FAST (Alltheweb.com) [alltheweb.com]

Search engine spiders are what will index your pages for inclusion at the search engines.

Here is a list of search engine spiders [searchengineworld.com]. There are more, also. After a while you'll get to recognize them.

And here is information on Alta Vista, as well as other search engines [searchengineworld.com].

After a while, you'll get to know all of them. Good luck with your site!

Marcia