Google CHTML Proxy disobeying robots.txt

Why?

[yosmc]

I set up a bad bot trap to disallow spiders that don't care about my robots.txt file, and to my surprise I caught Google CHTML Proxy/1.0 from IP 216.239.39.5 (which is a Google IP).

The robots.txt file has been unchanged for weeks, definitely enough time for any willing spider to read it. Any ideas why it's still being ignored by this particular bot?

[PeterD]

A proxy doesn't have to respect robots.txt because it's not a spider. There's a person behind it. Check out

[webmasterworld.com...]

Pete

[yosmc]

Thanks Pete, still learning something new every day. :)

I'm still a little bit confused, though. According to that information, Google CHTML Proxy shouldn't be sniffing around in hidden directories that are only accessible via hidden links. (If it's just following human clicks, why does it follow a link that cannot be seen by humans?) Hm...

[jimbeetle]

This WW thread might help:

[webmasterworld.com...]

And I'm just going to suppose here, so: Suppose what's displayed in a chtml-capable browser is different than a "normal" html browser. Might it be that those "hidden" links aren't so hidden.

Just specualtion.

[yosmc]

Ah ok, thanks - now it makes sense.