Who.is Bot

[iamzippy]

174.36.196.nnn - - [11/Mar/2012:00:17:03 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 ... www... "-" "Who.is Bot" "-"
174.36.196.nnn - - [11/Mar/2012:00:17:04 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 ... ... "-" "Who.is Bot" "-"

United States Dallas Softlayer Technologies Inc
AS36351, 174.36.0.0/15
Host: 174.36.196.nnn-static.reverse.softlayer.com

Second visit in 6 months from this IP. Ignores robots, follows redirects.

Kinda dull, eh?

[incrediBILL]

Most spider hunters block all of Softlayer and would never notice.

Rather clever bot name as it's also their domain name "who.is"

[iamzippy]

Softlayer is PNG here too. This is the first visit from an IP in that range since I blocked it last October. It got routed to a nothing page by a home-brewed WordPress plugin.

From their whois:
Comment: Our motto: Innovate or Die.

Pity it's not a call for a vote.

[lucy24]

:: insert classic Jack Benny line here ::

Robots that follow redirects tend to make me uneasy. Unless they're www or directory-slash redirects, which don't really count. At least for robotic purposes.

[iamzippy]

I entirely agree, Lucy24. In this case it was a www redirect. The jury is out for now.

Pray tell, what's that Jack Benny line?

[incrediBILL]

Having written a robot, a redirect is a redirect, they don't know one 301 or 302 from the other.

It's when they start chasing meta redirects and javascript redirects you should get nervous, and I did that too :)

[lucy24]

they don't know one 301 or 302 from the other

But it can be included in the programming, can't it? "IF you're redirected from your target URL to the identical URL plus or minus www THEN follow the redirect, ELSE report back to me."

Search-engine robots definitely distinguish between www redirects and "real" redirects. You can see them hippity-hopping in the logs, making two consecutive requests for the same page: a 301 followed by a 200.

what's that Jack Benny line?

"Your money or your life!"
"... I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"

[incrediBILL]

You can see them hippity-hopping in the logs, making two consecutive requests for the same page: a 301 followed by a 200.

Um, that's no different than if anything followed the same redirect, or any other redirect, nothing special.

[keyplyr]

Most spider hunters block all of Softlayer and would never notice.

'nuff said

[lucy24]

I went off to investigate a few random logs and instead found another goofy UA from a blocked IP (China).

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0) Opera 7.0 [en]

Uh... Make up your mind, willya? Come to think of it, didn't someone post about this variant recently?

Anyway, quick eyeballing suggests that what I get the most of is not 301-plus-200-- except Yandex, which can't get it into its head that it's with www-- but 301-plus-403.

The ones that intrigue me are the ones that ask for robots.txt at the wrong address, get redirected, and never come back. Makes it seem as if they never really wanted it in the first place, doesn't it?

[incrediBILL]

I went off to investigate a few random logs and instead found another goofy UA from a blocked IP (China).

... and that relates to who.is how?

I'm lost on how it ties into this thread, unless I missed the point, new thread perhaps?

[wilderness]

I'm lost on how it ties into this thread, unless I missed the point, new thread perhaps?

Bill, you provided an answer in your first reply, which caused a controversy in another thread.

After the answer was provided, the subsequent replies are all rambling, lucy just added a little more rambling ;)

[lucy24]

and that relates to who.is how?

I went off to check on the redirect question and got redirected ;)

I think everyone's now up to speed on who who.is is. Except that the name keeps making me think it's "whois.deliriumtremens.com" (substituting for Unprintable Name in the middle).