Is It A Bot? Yes Or Not?

Haven't noticed any new ones lately, but usually I look at the times. If they visit more than three or four in the same minute it's usually a bot.

If they visit images in a particular gallery only, I'm thinking maybe it's a real person, but I'm not sure about that assumption......

Thanks Mary, the ones that keep visiting at the same times are 99% BOT, I think....

I looked up Simi Valley once and it pointed to Amazon.com.

but Amazon clients can see our art through Amazon?

Yes, No, Yes.

Simi Valley? I live in Simi & I have not noticed any bots from here! (And, I have not randomly been visiting and driving people crazy!!) :-)

Lynn, I thought that Simi V. Was a well known bot around here...i get a lot of visits from Simi....none of them ever lead to a sale!

Lynn,

I used to work in Simi Valley - Preferred Glass Company - well over 20 years ago. But, the one Simi bot I looked up was related to Amazon, unless for some reason you keep looking at my work every other day :-)

Well, Valentino...I guess I just didn't realize we had any famous bots around here!! :-)
And, Jeffrey...Who knows...I may have bought glass, or had a windshield replaced by you at some time in the past! :-) We've actually been here for about 20 years, but my parents have been in Simi for closer to 40 years! It's definitely a small world!!!

I'm not computer savvy, so could someone please explain what a bot is, and can something be done about them? They're a pain in the bot . . . I mean butt! :)

Getting a lot of attention from Palo Alto recently..

San Francisco, New York, Kiez 12, Germany. I'm not sure if Saint Petersburg, Russia is a BOT. I get quite a few visits form there but one of my group owners lives there.

If it walks like a bot, its a bot.

Rita - a bot is a software program that scans and catalogs websites for the search engines (unless its an image scraper that grabs all of the images it can).

Thanks, Edward. So, are bots a good thing for us? Mine have been from New York, Beverly Hills, San Francisco.

yes, NY, SF, Beverly H. Kietz 12, Simi V. are all well known, at least for me...Saint Petersburg it's a mystery, browsing a lot, but maybe just a very active contributor. My Moorestown it's my personal mystery, been browsing for months a couple of my images but forget about placing an order! Must be a bot...

others?

The new one I'm seeing is from South Korea.

I just had about fifteen visits pop up in the same minute or two from a location I was not familiar with. So I assumed it was a bot with the quickness of the visits. Until I saw I had six comments from the same location at the same time! So not all visits from the same place at the same time are bots!

My research indicates Palo Alto is a Facebook bot.

And don't forget Guangzhou, this bot on its own has got one of my images to over 4000 views (it is really fixated on it). I think there's another Chinese bot. Brisbane may also be a bot.

I get alot of views from Beverly Hills and sometime Keiz, Germany.

@Valentino, if you hover over the location in the recent visits, you will see the ip address. Type that in to a whois lookup site and you will find out the entity it belongs to.

Please do not forget we also have customers from all these regions

How about Parma, Italy? A Bot? I recently had about 8 views from Parma, and all were within 2 minutes.

What is so discouraging, folks, and leaves me apathetic, is that this great "viewer" referencing that is so pronounced in Fine Art America is really just a facade--largely a phony promotion. Bots represent the vast viewer journey. So, while the way Fine Art America references "viewers," the tabulations let us think we are actually being "seen" and acknowledged as artists. In fact, the identified viewers are just computer robots dredging the data pool for information. Computer mecahnisms generate more computer mechanisms, and still more computer mechanicisms. The cycle of robotic data gathering goes on and on and on, with no real human acknowledgement. The internet is slowly defeating its communication abilities for art, it seems.

Kiez all of the time, for me.

perhaps it's the Illuminati getting in on the action....


---Mike Savad

I get tons of Russian Federation visits, and Kiez Germany. The bev Hills too, but I see that happens immediately after posting to Twitter when uploading and posting a new image and choosing that auto share to Twitter thing.
Joss

Kenneth;

Go help real people find your FAA art and don't worry so much about bots. That's my advice anyway.

Joseph: I do not worry about Bots, but your advice is sound. My point is that the "viewer" reference tallies are deceiving, if one really cares to regard them as a measure of some kind of outside interest. The FAA format for counting viewers and identifying their source sugests that an interested party has "looked" at your work. In fact, the tallies are mostly a record of a data search gathering. This discussion opened due to questions about Bots, and I am merely discussing the view-count for what it is--a collection of Bots, and not indicators of real visiting traffic. I am sensible enough, of course, to realize that no viewer volume means much unless it leads to something more.

Remember guys, the 'text' names are NOT enough to decide if its a bot or not.

You need to look for the IP address, if you hover your mouse over the text you will see the IP popup in a tool-tip.

That is what you need to determine if its a bot or not, the 'text' can be many many IPs from a mixture of bots and humans grouped under one text.

Rob.

Prague, Czech Republic is my latest, with hundreds (and hundreds!) of hits in the past few days. It's listed as a 'fulltextrobot', whatever that might mean.

Ottawa. A Canadian Bot?

I'm getting St. Petersburg, Russia a lot.


--Roz Barron Abellera

I just looked up one purporting to be from United Arab Eremites and the info said it was located in Mountain View, in the United States. ????????????????????????????

A Palo Alto bot has latched onto me in the past 24 hours and won't let me go!

Thank you for querying this. I am new to some computer stuff and the info about the hovering and ip address was nice for me. I get the same bots

Borger Texas really likes me. What the heck is in Borger?!

I have been getting Palo Alto for the last month like crazy!! Also Beverly Hills and NY. Every one of my images over and over again...but especially Palo Alto. Someone earlier in this thread also mentioned Palo Alto and it having something to do with Facebook? Can someone explain please? Thanks.

I have been getting a lot of hits on one specific photo from: New York Russian Federation. I looked it up, and found that this individual is a "known" hacker. Great, I would rather have the bots, thanks.

@JoNel

The text 'Palo Alto' or whatever is not enough to be able to identify the source well.

What you need to help more, is the IP address, this is found by hovering your mouse over the 'Palo Alto' text, and the IP will popup in a tooltip.

Many IP addresses can be grouped into the same text that is displayed. Sometimes also FAA seems to group IP's it doesnt know the location for into text (commonly 'New York') that is not actually the correct location, but just a 'default' group. Also if a person viewing your image is logged into their FAA account, then that text is what they enter into their account (which could be any location at all). This all means that the text is not 100% reliable.

Once you have the IP, you can use a few tools on the net to try to discover what the source of the view is.

As an example, I looked at one of your images: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/trippy-trees-at-the-edge-of-space-jonel-art-.html

It had 2 visits from the text 'Palo Alto' and the IPs for those 2 were 66.220.159.112 & 66.220.159.119

Both those IPs are within the range of IPs owned by/allocated to Facebook (see: http://myip.ms/info/whois/66.220.159.119)

And also Project honey pot (a bot detection project) suggests its also FB due to the browser info they have collected: https://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_66.220.159.119

There are many reasons for the Facebook bot to visit pages. For instance, when someone adds your image URL in a post in FB. Or, once the post is posted to FB, there are some extra views you get from the FB bot. It seems to do 1 visit each time a person from a difference country looks at the FB post. FB then seems to cache that info, and no further views get through to your image via the bot for that same country the user is from. You seem to get 1 view from each unique country.

If someone from the FB post clicks on the link through to your image, then that view will be logged with a different IP and text, that is relevant to where that view is from, not the FB IP and text.

There are also a few other times when the FB bot will visit your image, for instance if someone puts it into the FB developer tools like https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

This is just one example of what a bot view is and how to find it.

The same kind of thing happens with other social sites, like Twitter, Pinterest,etc.

FAA seem to filter out some of the big bots, like the Google search bot, as there are very few logs of Google bots that I have seen.

There are many many other bots and ways to find the info. Some are good and some a useless and bad. Unfortunately a large majority of bot views are just useless and/or hacking and spam bots. These are just bots that are looking for vulnerabilities in webs sites or trying to automatically post ads into comments. Other types of bots are HTTP_REFERER bots, again for ads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam)

The location services for IP addresses on the net is fairly good, but you have to realize that its not 100% accurate. Some databases have incorrect information, and also some IP's reported are not actually the end final IP. It can be a router that is a server in between the actual user. For example, when you use the internet from your phone via 3G, the phone company will probably be reporting your IP as one of their servers, as they pass all the traffic through their own networks.

Its not always 100% correct in finding out the source of the view, but its should help alot of the time, if you are interested.

All of this is not specific to FAA and is just how the internet works on any page.

HTH a bit ;)

Rob.

Search Bot - New York, NY
Search Bot - Kiez, Germany
Search Bot - Beverly Hills, CA

what about Palo Alto, CA
ah nvm, its written above

The visitor statistic here is quite useless for finding out, what your audience is. ItŽs more or less a mirror of your own activity. E. g. after uploading an image without promoting it on Facebook or Twitter, youŽll have 1 or 2 views after 10 minutes. If you promote it onTwitter, youŽll have 20-30 views after 10 minutes. (From bots, of course)

thanks FireFlux!

What is the point of these bots? are they stealing our images? I don't really understand why anyone would bother having a bot just looking at our images for any other reason.

Lately most of my views have been coming from Roubaix, France.

Anyone for Mocton, Canada?

Beverly Hills is a common locale when someone uses their cell phone....from my tracking, I've discovered that beverly hills is a cell phone catch all.

@Melany Sefaris re Borger , Texas............me, too..........it's a nice little college town......glad we have smart fans,lol. Anyone else?

It'sallaboutbots.

Ricardo I don't think Canada has bots but I could be wrong all my Canadian views are people I know on here or friends on FB but I do get all the ones mentioned above

Of course Canada can have bots! :)

Any country can and do have them.

I'm not saying your visits in particular are, just saying that Canada does have bot activity.

Example:
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_207.194.87.105

Rob.

Thank you Rob for that info interesting link :)

I recently read somewhere that around 60-70% of all web traffic is now non-human, so I wouldn't worry about it. Think about it; web traffic is growing far faster than population growth and tech proliferation can explain.

Soon we will all be bots...

Seoul South Korea .... everyone of my photos, more than once... wow

Ricardo,
Not the treble?