msnbot/1.0 from CN

real or fake?

[thetrasher]

219.142.53.11 and 219.142.53.17
(no ptr records)
UA "msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"
no referer
HTTP/1.0
reads robots.txt and default main page

IP belongs to CHINANET beijing province network

[fiestagirl]

Unfortunately no answers but the same question.

Saw something similar from:
219.141.219.***

Same UA and no ptr.

[Ocean10000]

I have started seeing MSNBOT/1.0 returning a hostname like the following as of this last Monday.

207.46.98.73 -->
livebot-207-46-98-73.search.live.com -->
207.46.98.73

Which seems to be following Googles lead by using dns lookups as a way to identify the real bot verses someone trying to spoof them.

This is only for MSNBOT/1.0 so far not the MSNBOT-media and other variants from Microsoft.

MSNBOT include an extra Header "From" with a value "msnbot(at)microsoft.com" which can also help weed out spoofers.

[Ocean10000]

I just seen this on one of my sites on this ip 219.142.53.21
everything else was identical.

Only checked Robots.txt and left (which it was baned) so it seems to be well behaved.

[wilderness]

Although not entirely on-topic my inquiry for the same bot.

I seem to recall that 1.0 was the MS image bot?

As previously mentioned in another thread
( [webmasterworld.com...] ), I have severe problems of communication with the many MS bots.

Yesterday, I have 1.0 crawling with the same UA from three entirely different ARIN ranges.

65.54.188.149
64.4.8.136 (denied)
207.46.98.111

previous days
202.96.51.149 (APNIC denied)

msn-dude informed us a while back that MS was sorting out their bot identities and UA's however these inconsistecies seem to just add more confusion.