Altavista bot requesting random garbage

like /bwbgjjstnqrniomomisn.html

[bnhall]

Hi - the altavista robot visits me regularly - and requests some real files and always some random garbage, like /bwbgjjstnqrniomomisn.html.

What's it up to?

[bobriggs]

It's done this before, some kind of 404 error checker.

I always thought it was looking for redirects from 404 errors.

[highman]

its seeing what you are up to ;)

By looking at the response for random pages it is possible to work out how your web is set up, have also seen GBot doing this