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GoogleTrax

got sent this in an email

         

papamaku

10:33 pm on Feb 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



anyone heard of this?

was sent to me in a spam email by google dance dot com
if so has anyone used it? whats it like? has it got any spyware in it?

maku

yosmc

10:42 pm on Feb 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



As far as I know you only get their emails if you sign up for their dance alert...

Chico_Loco

11:01 pm on Feb 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That's right - I'm not in the business of spamming. If you got the email, you signed up .. and not only did you sign up - but you MUST have confirmed your address before being fully activated.

Not only that, but if you fully read the email, you'd see that there was a way to sign off the list .. just in case you were too dim to remember you signed onto it in the first place!

There's no spyware in it - It's a CGI program.

:):):)

papamaku

11:23 pm on Feb 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



sorry, apologies

i didn't mean spam as in a random email, i am signed up to their service and i just meant it was an unexpected email

what i was wondering about was the program itself

Chico_Loco

11:42 pm on Feb 23, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Well I might be bias (given that I am Darrin Ward), but in my opinion it's good.

It's a pretty simple program that will log hits from the Googlebot ordered by date. I'm not claiming it's the worlds best program or anything, but if your server supports CGI & you can run SSI (Server Side Includes) the it is worth a shot.

It beats running through your logfile looking for hits by Googlebot!

Jon_King

3:28 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I like your site and tools and I just signed up.
Jon

ga_ga

4:21 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Just a thought.. I receive a lot of true spam, and a lot of mail for which I *have* signed up in the past. I make darn sure I check before reporting anything as spam, but one thing does help I find; a clear note up at the *top* of the mail, reminding me specifically when I signed up, and what the name of the service was. Saves having to spend ages hunting through the source, then realising .. ahh yes, I do remember that.

I never open HTML email fully on the first pass, so any reminder notice is more helpful if it's right up at the top of the body of the mail.

just my 2p

Stefan

4:35 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Hey Chico, respect. I get the occasional email, (got that one), not a problem.

It's legit, papamaku. It won't work for me, but I sort of enjoy scrolling through the logfiles with wordpad anyway.

:)

seindal

6:44 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Stefan, there is a unix tool called 'grep' that quickly filters out selected lines from text files, making it very easy to extract googlebot lines from the server logs. This tool has been ported to windows many times, so search google for "grep for windows" and you'll find it.

I haven't tried any of the w32 ports.

René.

eaden

10:30 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



ga_ga : as for a message on the top saying "you signed up for this email, it is not spam" etc doesn't work.. as many spam emails say that too. If you want a solution to spam I would reccomend spamassassin [spamassassin.org]

As for google log analysis, what I do is simple but effective.

I have my apache log file, and I do a
cat access.log ¦ grep Googlebot > googlebot.log
( for those not familiar with unix, it opens the apache access.log and filters out all accesses by googlebot, and saves it to a file googlebot.log )

Then I run webalizer [webalizer.org] on that googlebot.log, which produces pretty graphs of when and where googlebot visited. This of course can be automated so you only have to visit yoursite.com/googlebotstats/ to see your googlebot stats.

ga_ga

10:48 am on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



> many spam emails say that too

Absolutely - I tend to find the genuine ones are easy to spot though, they tend not to use the same kind of generic and often 'threatening' quasi-legal tone. When source is viewed in a small window in OE, a recognisable memory-jogger of a site name near the top of the body source has stopped me dumping a 'fair-enough' communication into a spamcop form more than once.

Just a user's perspective for those who employ opt-in.

Chico_Loco

10:24 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I too use the grep command. You can also use the following command to email the result to you instead of putting them in a log file:

grep 'Googlebot' /path/to/access_log ¦ /usr/sbin/sendmail you@domain.com

I also use the following to see the total number of hits from Google:

grep 'Googlebot' /path/to/access_log -c

roundabout

10:39 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



eaden:

pretty nifty - do you know if it's possible for me to do something similar on a local windows machine? I can download my apache server logs, but I don't have a unix box to run cat, grep, etc. I would really like to be able to view my apache logs with webalizer using windows XP. Any suggestions?

yosmc

11:03 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Does anybody know how I can unsubscribe from this thread? It says that I have to edit my previous post and uncheck the email notification, but it's not possible to edit an older post. Making a new post and leaving the notification box unchecked won't work either.

Stefan

11:26 pm on Feb 24, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Merci bien, René. I've been having a look at some stuff about grep... haven't tried it yet.