Spider Watcher

Spider Watcher
Author: Mikel Beck (mikel.beck@elite-computing.net)

This hack keeps track of the spiders (Search Engine robots) that visit your fourm. Every time a guest visits a page, the guest's IP address, user agent and the page they visited are logged to the database.

When somebody views the spider statistics page, this data is "rolled up", meaning the raw data is collated, the spider's name is determined by comparing the user agent to data contained in the spiders_bulletin.xml file, and the number of pages and visits is summarized and writted back to the database. In addition, and data from non-bots is removed.

The data is then displayed in a easy to read format for your viewing pleasure.

If the user viewing the report has permissions to view IP addresses, these are displayed as well.

A live version of the report from one of my sites can be seen here: http://www.happyhourpub.com/spiders.php

Also see the attached screenshot for an exmaple.


Revision History:
1.0.0 Beta 1 - 01/05/2006
- Initial Release

1.0.0 Beta 2 - 01/06/2006
- Included templates for spiders.php
- Removed text from templates, added them as phrases

1.0.0 Beta 3 - 01/07/2006
- Split up the display of "known" and "unknown" spiders

1.0.0 Beta 4 - 01/25/2006
- Corrected potentional SQL injection issue in plug-in
- Reduced the number of SQL queries required to display statistics
- Corrected date/time display issue

1.0.0 Beta 5 - 02/01/2006
- Reduced the number of SQL queries required to display statistics

1.0.0 Beta 6 - 02/08/2006
- No release

1.0.0 Beta 7 - 02/11/2006
- Corrected issue with "unknown" spiders not being displayed properly.
- Added tracking of the type of spider (searchspider, link checker, etc)

1.0.0 Beta 8 - 02/19/2006
- Change the display of IP addresses to be a pop-up so they're all not displayed on the main page.
- Combined the spiders that have the same name but different user agents.

1.0.0 Beta 9 - 03/10/2006
- Changed the display to group similar spiders together (search spiders, http check spiders, etc)

1.0.0 Beta 10 - 08/08/2006
- Changed how the rollup functions. Instead of rolling up every time somebody views the spider page, it rolls up once per hour.
- Corrected a few bugs here and there, mostly related to removing entries from the database.

Installation Instructions
1. Upload spiders.php to the root of your forum.
2. Upload spiders_rollup.php to the includes/cron directory.
3. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module.
4. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.
5. Add a cron job with the following information:
Title: Spider Watcher Rollup
Day of the Week: *
Day of the Month: *
Hour: *
Minute: 0 - - -
Log entries: Yes
Filename: ./includes/cron/spiders_rollup.php

Upgrade Instructions
1. Upload (and overwrite) spiders to the root of your forum.
2. Upload spiders_rollup.php to the includes/cron directory.
3. Import the file product-spiderwatcher.xml using the Manage Products module. Make sure the "Allow Overwrite" option is set to "Yes".
4. Add a link to spiders.php on your navbar or footer.
5. Add a cron job with the following information:
Title: Spider Watcher Rollup
Day of the Week: *
Day of the Month: *
Hour: *
Minute: 0 - - -
Log entries: Yes
Filename: ./includes/cron/spiders_rollup.php

***UPGRADE NOTE***
When you upgrade from version 1.0.0 Beta 7 to 1.0.0 Beta 8 your existing spider data will be lost!

To make sure that you can decode the maximum amount of spiders, you should grab the latest spiderlist.xml and replace the spiders_vbulletin.xml file in your forumhome/includes/xml/ directory with the one from this thread: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76662

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Loco.M

mikelbeck,

Sorry to ask this again, since it seems I'm the only one requested this but...

is there a way I can reset these stats ?

as I stated in my last post, I'm trying/testing out several SEO techniques and I'd like to be able to reset these one week,, see how many spiders and where they are going,,
then make some SEO changes and reset again, and compare the results

if it's as easy and clearing out a MySQL table, please inform me what one, as I'm not a pro with SQL and wouldn't want to ruin something else my clearing out the wrong table..

and if you can add a reset option in vboption that would be prefect for me at least

thank you

You can just truncate the table. If you have phpMyAdmin, go to the bots table, there should be on option (usually on the right hand side) that says "empty". That'll get rid of all the data in the table but keep the structure.

[Brandon Sheley]

thank you,, that's what i figured, but wanted to make sure b4 I emptied something that I shouldn't

[Zia]

helo michelbeck..
in ur current listed page there are two block
Search & unknown

as i would like to req. u to add One More portion Forum Spider
www.boardreader.com
www.boardtracker.com [this bot is very harmfull..that can even access every are..]

we needed to know that our site is being listed there or not....

can u have a thought on it?

[mikelbeck]

I'll see if that's something I can do. I can't promise it, though...

[mikelbeck]

Version 1.0.0 Beta 5 is now available.

1.0.0 Beta 5 - 02/01/2006
- Reduced the number of SQL queries required to display statistics

***UPGRADE NOTE***
When you upgrade from version 1.0.0 Beta 4 to 1.0.0 Beta 5 your existing spider data will be lost!

[shaynehammy]

If my spiders page doesnt show any spiders does that mean my forum sucks ass and google cant be bothered with it?

[nitro]

Originally Posted by shaynehammy

If my spiders page doesnt show any spiders does that mean my forum sucks ass and google cant be bothered with it?

Perhaps its juts google is too busy sucking ass elsewhere

@mikelbeck I have just noticed having looked at the old vb 3 mod talkerbot to see if theres any easy way to get it to work in 3.5 that your spider watcher table 'bots' clashes with one of the main alice engine tables for it. Maybe it would be wise to change yours while in an early stage of develoment to a more relevant name ie: 'spiders' or 'spider_watcher' ?

I suspect it would be far easier for yours to change than the other way as the alice engine itself is a 3rd party engine to the mod itself.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by nitro

@mikelbeck I have just noticed having looked at the old vb 3 mod talkerbot to see if theres any easy way to get it to work in 3.5 that your spider watcher table 'bots' clashes with one of the main alice engine tables for it. Maybe it would be wise to change yours while in an early stage of develoment to a more relevant name ie: 'spiders' or 'spider_watcher' ?

I suspect it would be far easier for yours to change than the other way as the alice engine itself is a 3rd party engine to the mod itself.

Thanks for that info, I'll take care of that in the next release.

[nitro]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Thanks for that info, I'll take care of that in the next release.

Awsome cuz I have about sorted the old talkerbot to work I just havent figured how to add the extra option for random chance of a response to the forumoptions page in admincp and its not parsing its own smilies.

And Iv no doubt once ExtremeTim gets the full new version out as its supposed to be a multi bot the bots table will get used a lot more.

[BoardTracker]

Originally Posted by Zia

www.boardtracker.com [this bot is very harmfull..that can even access every are..]
we needed to know that our site is being listed there or not....

BoardTracker is not 'harmful', it is a search engine for forums. Please take a closer look before making such assumptions. To know if your site is indexed (it isn't) simply search for it using 'site:domain.com'. BoardTracker is robots.txt compliant anyway so you can fully control access.