Are the bots in your spiders_vbulletin.xml file (located in includes/xml)? This mod uses this file to determine if the visitor is a bot or not.

Just a quick question/security concern:
How are you identifying SE bots? Are you using the user-agent?
If so, are bots allowed to post (considering they're regarded as regular members) ?
If so, What's to stop me loading up Opera, changing my user-agent to googlebot and posting on your forums?

I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, I'd really like to add this to my forum. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and perform due diligence.

Yes, the modification uses the spiders_vbulletin.xml and checks the user-agent to determine if you're a bot or not. And if you follow the default installation, you'll be allowing bots or humans who are clever enough to change their user-agent to post on your site.

HOWEVER, you can set whatever group you want the bots/humans to be in. If you want the bots to be able to see your site but not post, create a new usergroup that doesn't allow posting, just viewing. Which is what I would recommend in any case, so nobody can spoof a bot and post on your forums.

To change to that group, just modify the code you added in init.php and change that group ID to whatever ID you have setup for that special group.

I want only the spider for google adsense to get through and not the others. So I tried changing the spiders_vbulletin.xml to just what's below but then my pages in the forum don't come up at all. Any ideas why? Is there a better way to do this?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<searchspiders>
<spider ident="Mediapartners-Google">
<name>Google AdSense</name>
<info>https://www.google.com/adsense/faq</info>
<email>adsense-support@google.com</email>
</spider>
</searchspiders>

<!-- CVS: $RCSfile: spiders_vbulletin.xml,v $ - $Revision: 1.2 $ -->

For some reason not entirely clear to me, VBulletin doesn't handle a single entry in the spiders_vbulletin.xml file very well. So, just add another Spider in the file. For your example, I added GoogleBot as well as Google Adsense.

Try this spiders_vbulletin.xml:

Thanks. That resolved it. Very weird but I can work with that.

Yeah, it is weird, I'll have to look into it a little more. I might have to update the mod to use it's own XML file for what bots you want in or not, so as not to mess with the original file.

Maybe if I have time this weekend...

umm nice..support......do u mind to rrelase an update spiderlist.xml

i trust,u tweak/customize ur spider list......can u relase it....
in fact now a days no one taking care of spiders list...

it's a black hat technique

google says don't optimize your pages for spiders, if you do, you are taking a high risk...

I downloaded the one offered at vbulletin.com - here's the link:

http://www.ragnarokonline.de/spiderlist/spiderlist.xml

Upload it into includes/xml, name it spiders_vbulletin.xml

You could also name it that before uploading and overwrite the one in that directory. I keep one called spiders_vbulletin.xml.new in includes/xml so when upgrading VB versions, I can just copy that one over the default one given in VB.