Zeus 2.6

[Orange_XL]

Does anyone know what Zeus is?

211.147.3.44 - - [03/Jan/2003:09:35:40 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 12055 "-" "Zeus 2.6"

[wilderness]

240 hits on Zeus in this site "site search" top of page

[georgeek]

Chinese bot, it seems to come from various IP addresses owned by totally different companies when you look up the APNIC entry. For example your hit: 211.147.3.44
descr: DYNEGY-COMMUNICATION
descr: CO.LTD
descr: BEIJING
country: CN

and one of mine 211.157.101
descr: beijing hongqingting tech. trade co., ltd.
descr: company
country: CN

[Orange_XL]

Wilderness, I already knew that. And since none of those 240 answers my qusstion, I posted this topic...

[richlowe]

Zeus is a silly little robot that you can use to spider sites which presumably are of a similar topic to yours. You use Zeus, in theory, to manage the link exchange for you. The program is a nice idea with a terrible implementation. It has been responsible for a huge amount of email spam and misuse of the product has sullied the concept of link exchanges. However, it is popular among amateurs (although some pros have successfully used the product as well). There have been rumors, as yet unsubstantiated, that using Zeus will possibly get your site banned from Google.

Richard Lowe

[GaryK]

At the URL I have for Zeus they now state on their home page:

Using link-building programs that query or use the search engines for finding web sites, data or information can penalize or even get your web site banned.

[Orange_XL]

But, the fact that someone is spidering my site with Zeus is bad? Do I need to ban them, or start worrying that I get kicked out of Google?
This is a commercial site which has a top 3 position in every major search-engine (after a lot of work), and if it would get banned I have a big problem :-(

[Dreamquick]

Getting spidered by Zeus wont get you banned, however what I think the others were trying to convey is that running Zeus yourself or using the resulting data that Zeus provides could get you banned.

As to whether you want to ban them that's up to you, personally my view on these "independant" crawlers is that if they behave well and stand a chance of bringing in some traffic then why not let them be...

- Tony