Thousands of times hitting the same page

MSIE, not off-line browser

[Natashka]

This weird thing happens to my site almost every 2-3 days: a visitor gets stuck on one page and hits it constantly like several thousands time in 5-10 minutes. The record was 40,000 times, but average is about 2,000 - 10,000 times. I have a htaccess on my site that bans off-line browsers, but it doesn't help (my htaccess doesn't work at the moment, but anyway, even when it used to work). It doesn't help, because my logs show that these hits are always coming from MSIE (5.5 or higher). A visitor comes from a search engine and all of a sudden gets stuck on one page! And every time different people. I cannot figure out why! Even if it is an off-line browser that is cloaking, still it's not supposed to do it. It's supposed to crawl through my site and not get stuck on one page and hit it 20,000 times in 5 minutes!

I read somewhere that those downloaders sometimes get caught in a loop (like Error page that doesn't really exist), but this is not a case. Besides, my pages are absolutely normal html pages, no refreshing content, no java scripts, like java redirect or smth... Just plain html! I cannot find anything on my pages that any UA can get stuck on. Another thing I've noticed is that it mostly happens to the users on Mac's (80% of cases), but on Windows too, especially NT.

Since I cannot figure out what is causing it, I don't know how to fight it. :( And since it always happens to MSIE only, htaccess doesn't really help. And this is really bad, as not only it sucks up all the bandwidth, but most importantly I have a banner sponsor that pays CPM and if my CTR falls too low - I'm out. Especially if those hits are coming from some not North American IP.

Any thoughts what might cause it?

[jdMorgan]

but most importantly I have a banner sponsor that pays CPM and if my CTR falls too low - I'm out. Especially if those hits are coming from some not North American IP.

Any thoughts what might cause it?

A competitor messing with your CTR? Check the IP addresses and see if there is anything in common. If your .htaccess contains no redirects that could be causing this, and if there is no 301 or 302 redirect looping, and if you aren't running scripts or serving dynamic pages, then that leaves intentional abuse.

Jim

[Natashka]

No, I don't have anything of above on my site, and my htaccess only contains 403 and 404 error pages, which are on the same server. The only thing I have on my pages are SSI (header and footer are included via SSI, shtml extension), sponsor's banner is an IFRAME (not a self-refreshing banner, no pop-ups, just a static 468x60 one) and I have a little java script hit counter at the bottom.

And the IP's have nothing in common, they are all over the world, different real ISP's (not an anonymous proxy) and those people are comming from the search engines. The only thing in common is that most of them are Mac users.

Oh, well, thanks Jim for answering anyways :)

[jdMorgan]

Natashka,

No problem...

But your mention of a JS hit counter gave me one more idea: If you have an "escape from referring site's frame" script, you might try turning it off for a day or two, or just stare at the code real hard and see if you see anything wrong. Since this kind of code commonly redirects to the current page, any bug in it that would cause it to think it was still stuck in a frame would cause it to redirect (and reload) again and again.

Maybe someone else will come up with a better idea... Weird (and scary) problem. :o

Best,
Jim

[Slade]

"on Windows too, especially NT. "

Windows 2000 will show up as WinNT in a lot of cases.

[Natashka]

Jim, I think you are right. I am not an expert on java script and cannot tell if it's causing the problem. Also I never used Mac, only Windows. But just in case, I've replaced the hit counter with another one and lets see if this fixes the problem. Thanks :)