Forum Moderators: open
My own site has been in existence some 27 months.
I have many hours tied in in not only pages but the content of the pages. Even more hours in accumulating the content beforehand.
Much of my stuff is nowhere else on the web. Nor nowhere near as extensive.
Even though I deal with a very narrow subject!
My sites purpose is to provide subject matter for this narrow market.
Does it make sense to narrow that market even further?
Why would I allow commercial ventures to reap the benefits of my NON profit sweat?
If I was commercial?
Why would I allow another commercial venture to reap the benefits of my work?
Many of these bots when they begin have no clue as to if they are going to survive or not. Even their defined intent can change within days.
Just yesterday I had four new bots visit. NONE with extensive pages defining their purpose or intent of use with what they gather from my site.
It just doesn't make sense to me personally to allow this kinds of bots.
If my only concern was numbers why waste my time even looking at my logs?
Am I missing something here?
thnaks in advance
IMO it depends on your objective(s) for your site. If you are selling something, then the conversion ratio of the traffic set to you by a particular link is one indicator. If you simply want to expose as many surfers to your content as possible, then the amount of traffic may be an indicator.
In general terms if bots use up bandwith without providing anything useful for you in return, then I consider them to not be good at "promoting GENUINE traffic to your website".
My .02
