Yellow Pages bot impersonating Googlebot?

[mrtonyg]

I just saw this on my log:

64.209.132.4 - - [19/Apr/2011:04:37:59 -0400] "GET /filename.html HTTP/1.1" 403 380 "-" "YPBot/Raven1.1.3 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.yellowpages.com/about/legal/crawl)"

Yellow Pages IP with both their bot and Googlebot names...?

Do the yellow pages and google have a partnership?

What is going on...should I allow them access?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[topr8]

anything calling itself googlebot that doesn't pass a reverse dns test gets blocked by us.

[mrtonyg]

I blocked them, but thought it was very odd that a relatively mainstream company would attempt to pull a fast one.

[topr8]

... actually there is no hostname associated with the ip address you gave ...

quite possibly not yellow pages either!

[phranque]

Yellowpages.com SAVV-S265785-1 (NET-64-209-132-0-1) 64.209.132.0 - 64.209.132.255

[topr8]

ok so it is yellow pages, but no hostname set up!

[dstiles]

I have no bot recorded as having come from that range and certainly not a googlebot, which would get rejected on that IP range, or a YP bot.

There is no rDNS, as topr8 mentions, so it's due a blocking.

The parent of that IP range is Savvis, which is worth blocking anyway.

[Staffa]

Got a visit today from 208.93.105.250 - null.ev1.yellowpages.com
YPBot/Raven1.1.3 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; http: //www.yellowpages.com/about/legal/crawl)

Took robots.txt and left, well good luck to them when it comes back ;o)
The 208. range was never in my good books

[lucy24]

Any possible relationship to this activity [webmasterworld.com]?

[Staffa]

No, none.
This is Ypages, the other thread is Ybook

[g1smd]

There's a LOT of stuff in 208. much of it not good.