GirafaBot

Who? What? Where?

[frontpage]

64.210.196.198 - - [03/Oct/2002:16:54:44 -0700] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 356 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT; Girafabot; girafabot at girafa dot com; www.girafa.com "

Any one have experience with this one?

[edited by: Woz at 10:46 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2002]

[edited by: Marcia at 11:00 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2002]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

Yes,

These are the guys who developed the "screen shot" capability now built into MSN search. It puts up a thumbnail screenshot of your home page as part of their search results. When they first hit my site, the provided no identifiable UA or contact info. I chased them down using the IP address, and complained. The next day, they modified the UA - Talk about responsive!

Anyway, I liked the screenshot idea, so I let them come back in.

Jim

[Marcia]

I have no qualms whatsoever about the Google toolbar, I'm 100% at ease having it on all the time. But they're just one company that I am comfortable with, and I'm not concerned with any info going any further than Google.

I don't care for the privacy potential with Girafa though, I'm not comfortable with it at all. They're gathering data in exchange for the service, and having worked market research I suspect it's for client companies. I just don't care for the lack of control of who gets my data; I like to have that choice and have it very clearly delineated.

[jdMorgan]

Marcia,

Please expound on your concerns - I didn't download their toolbar, so I haven't thought about it. I do like the "exposure" of having the screenshot of my site (it's a non-profit "info" site) come up right on top, but now you've got me wondering...

Thanks,
Jim

[martin]

So Girafabot is bad?

[wilderness]

<snip>So Girafabot is bad?>

Whether it's good or bad depends upon each webmasters desire as to how their content is spidered, used and displayed.

If you desire your content duplicated and displayed in a manner which is neither what you intended when designing your pages and is not beneficial to your site? While haveing used your bandwidth to do so!
www.girafa.com/index.acr?c=1

If you desire your content displayed on your site than deny them.

[edited by: Marcia at 10:27 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2002]
[edit reason] de-activated URL [/edit]

[martin]

Will they remove my whole site. I submitted only the root for removal but it says they will remove the URL, not the site.

I also added them to robots.txt. If they really intend to re-crawl my site every 72 hours as it says on their site they surely have to go.

[Marcia]

I haven't read it all in depth, but they can change any of their conditions at will, you *may* end up at sites for advertising or promotion - it's your choice whether to click or purchase - which seems too much like inviting popups or getting redirected. And instead of sites you're getting their images. I just don't care for anything whatsoever, it just seems like too much possibility of infringement all around.