String followed by phx.gbl

What is this?

[abbeyvet]

I am getting a load of hits from <various alhpanumeric strings>.phx.gbl

What is this? As far as I can ascetain the extension .gbl is used for file associated with the VAXTPU Editor, whatever that might be.

Can this be stopped in .htaccess in the same way that a TLD would be?

[Pfui]

My server logs show .phx.gbl accesses as UA...

msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

...hailing from Microsoft IPs.

You can block the bot using mod_rewrite, or control it via robots.txt (see site for details).

Do your logs show other than msnbot UAs or non-MS IPs?

[abbeyvet]

Yes, the normal msnbot.msn.com is also a regular - though it takes far fewer pages.

If its an MSN bot of some sort I don't want to touch it, I just never saw it until the last few weeks.

Thanks, I had just never seen that extension before.