Forum Moderators: open
I see visitors coming from Brandimentions tracking site. From what I can get at their site it is a "brand protection, reputation management" etc. kinda stuff. Sounds similar to Nameprotect.
Do they have a spider? How do they "track" websites? Can thit be blocked? I don't want some third company phishing through our sites and then sell their phishing service to others.
Do they have a spider? How do they "track" websites? Can thit be blocked?
My goodness!
Plenty of questions with not a single log line to work with? ;)))))
If the thingy has vistied my sites, I don't recall it. Many such services exist.
You may deny by UA or IP what ever suits your fancy.
The process of deny will not stop you from seeing the 403 lines. It will stop the visitor from gaining access.
Nobody may assist with that unless you provide a log line.
Don
Plenty of questions with not a single log line to work with?
Yep, this is correct, we are on semi-dedicated, and have no access to full logs. What I pulled was stats from statistics analysis software.
I see hits requesting this URL (not ours, obviously):
customers.brandimensions.com/CatSysWebApp/NextContent.aspx?contentid=NNNNNNNN
(where NNNNNNN is some long ID),
with no referrer link, 4 different users from Ontario province, Canada.
To add to this, we don't infringe on any copyright, all content is either written by us or is publicly available through merchant XML.
Still, I really dislike someone snooping aroung OUR sites using OUR bandwidth so that they can find something to sue US - and make it their business model. If I can find spider that pulled content, I'd like to pull a 5th ammendment on it and ban it from sites completely.
we are on semi-dedicated, and have no access to full logs.
Than I suggest implementing something similar to this:
[sitemeter.com...]
which will provide you with accurate and useful information.
However and IMO if your host won't even allow you access to visitor logs than it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to implement changes in htaccess against visitors you do not desire.
Your going to need to explore the web for solutions that will provide insights into and permit usefullness of the data that is available to you.
In the current state, your unable to even compare a visitors IP range to ARIN or RIPE.
Nobody is going to be able to assist you with such limited visitor data.
Best of luck
Don
htaccess - no, we are on Windows.
since we don't have mod_rewrite, we have our own solution to blocking bots and users. which is pretty flexible.
I have IPs, but what have IPs of users to do with the information on a bot that I am trying to find? I don't know if the bot visited, or even if it exists, I assume it does because somehow these users hit our site, and requests come from brandimensions.com. However I want to confirm that - the company could be using any SE scraping technique to get the info...
I have IPs, but what have IPs of users to do with the information on a bot that I am trying to find? I don't know if the bot visited, or even if it exists, I assume it does because somehow these users hit our site, and requests come from brandimensions.com. However I want to confirm that - the company could be using any SE scraping technique to get the info...
IP's of users and UA's it what helps you both determine the visitors and allow or deny their access.
If your not sure it's a bot and you do not desire the visitors referred from a domain than just deny those referrals.
There are two ways to determine (via your visitor logs) whether a visitor is spidering and/or scraping you site.
1) An automated tool is used and the pages are accessed very rapidly and faster than a visitor is capable of reading the content of your pages.
2) Having created and designed your website, you are familiar with the structure of the site and how the links are intertwined.
a) A vsitor begans access many pages without assitance of an outside SE, in a fashion that is not comparable structure of the site and how the links are intertwined.
The domain you previouslu mentioned advertises their services on the front page of their domain. Their is no question of what their objective would be in visiting any webite.
BTW, it's the practice of this forum not to promote (rather innocently or not) these types of service or log spammers services because it only has the effect of furthering their advertising efforts.
If you don't use htaccess than your Windows (IIS) alternative is http.config. (they both accomplish similar things.)
Does your host allow you access to http.config to allow restriction in visitor access.
I am away from the office and don't have my archived logs and data right now, but I remember banning their ip netblock over a year ago for what appeared as content scraping. The bot UA was BDFetch if I remember right. Whatever their intentions... good or bad...I don't build and maintain online resources for someone else's commercial benefit... whatever that is.
