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 XtremeOffroad

thanx fot the update, argh all the activity is gone now. but thanks again

What version did you update from? There wasn't anything in this version to delete your old data.

Originally Posted by nitro

Updated seems ok

Think I would prefer a popup window that can be used like being able to copy the IP this would make it easier to add the bots ip to a banned IP list if you didnt want it on your site and it was ignoring robot.txt.

I'll see what I can do with that.

Another little suggestion the Bot name could be a link to a search engine so you can quickly access links about a bot and its origins and behaviour.

If there's data in the spiders file about the URL, the spider name is linked to that URL.

[Zia]

Originally Posted by Shuvo

Updated .. !seen Zia :P.. Newayz thnx Mikelbeck..

lolz...u should have wait for me...


Grate old data didnt lost....Thnx MikelBech.


Micel plz wait for next release..i collect all the data of unknown spider from my site & from happyhourpub too. n i submiited this in vb.com n some other place to identify them properly n put them in the list.xml . After getting the update list , the next version will be more perfect.


Thanks

[2ndCz]

Thanks for the update. Love this hack!

Just wondering, the last activity date/time on my spider info seems to be off by like a day. The spider hits go up fine, but the date seems off to me.

My server time is +2 from me. So if that was the problem I think the time would be 2 hours ahead (not a day behind), wouldn't it?

Any ideas? Thanks.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Zia

Micel plz wait for next release..i collect all the data of unknown spider from my site & from happyhourpub too. n i submiited this in vb.com n some other place to identify them properly n put them in the list.xml . After getting the update list , the next version will be more perfect.


Thanks

No update would be required to this hack if/when th vbulletin_spiders.xml file is updated. Just replace that file on your server, this hack will pick up the changes and will start reporting the updated spiders.

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by 2ndCz

Thanks for the update. Love this hack!

Just wondering, the last activity date/time on my spider info seems to be off by like a day. The spider hits go up fine, but the date seems off to me.

My server time is +2 from me. So if that was the problem I think the time would be 2 hours ahead (not a day behind), wouldn't it?

Any ideas? Thanks.

Are you using the latest version? Do you have a URL?

[Traxdata]

Cool idea, but there must be a bug or something.
After install I couldn't use "New Posts" function (search.php?do=getnew) - Site not found.
Note: "Search" function (search.php) worked fine.
I have disabled this hack and everything is fine now.
Tested on vB 3.5.2.

[2ndCz]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

Are you using the latest version? Do you have a URL?

Yep. Downloaded the latest version today.

URL: http://forums.secondcitizen.com/spiders.php

[mikelbeck]

Originally Posted by Traxdata

Cool idea, but there must be a bug or something.
After install I couldn't use "New Posts" function (search.php?do=getnew) - Site not found.
Note: "Search" function (search.php) worked fine.
I have disabled this hack and everything is fine now.
Tested on vB 3.5.2.

I can't imagine why that would happen... This hack has nothing to do with the search functions... Did it only happen when you did a "new posts" search or on any other pages?

[Robbed]

Afer uprading all the other spiders look like this

Unknown Spider
Gigabot/2.0/gigablast.com/spider.html

They all say unknown? How would I clear the data to start fresh?

[Traxdata]

Originally Posted by mikelbeck

I can't imagine why that would happen... This hack has nothing to do with the search functions... Did it only happen when you did a "new posts" search or on any other pages?

Yes, just with "New Posts" functions but now I tested this hack on vB 3.5.4 - works like charm!
Thank you very much !