Wondering What This Is All About??

I don't know about Sweden, but Beverly Hills and New York are well-known bots. Some have noted that actual people live there, too, but I assume that they make up a tiny portion of visitors from those locations; so I simply ignore them. The FAA view counter is basically meaningless and I don't concern myself with views at all. I have almost three times as many views as you (in three fewer years), yet very few sales, especially lately.

My assumption is that as many as 90% of the 'views' are really from bots. You are likely correct in assuming that very few real people are doing the 'viewing.'

The same exact thing happened to me as well. I always have visitors from Kista, Sweden, Beverly Hills CA and New York. There was one day this week, when the Kista, Sweden visitor looked for a whole day at several pictures in my portfolio, some of them for 8 times! I was wondering too, if these are bots and why this is happening. If anyone has an answer, please let us know. It would be sad, if only bots looking at my pages.

Amazingly, there is more then one bot in both New York and Los Angeles. There are also something like 50 million people in the two cities combined, as well as the fact that we know that some mobile searches filter through New York despite taking place in other parts of the country. So unless you're neurotically tracking IP addresses it really isn't possible to claim that EVERY visit from NY and LA are bots.

@ Murray- I assumed that some may possibly be real people but I don't think this many at once from one location would be that interested in me! Yes, I think I may be a veteran here. Not sure when the site began at the moment but I have had few sales but not as a lack of me trying. I sell my originals well though- just not prints. Go figure? I guess I will ignore views from now on.

@Danielle- The 8 times thing you mentioned has also happened so I started wondering if the bots got stuck on me and my pages or something.


@ Joshua- I didn't know about the mobile search in through New York. That may explain a lot about the NY ones then. I guess I must be a little neurotic because I did compare some IP addresses and a lot are from the same IP over and over but without knowing which ones are bots, that was a waste.. I could have been painting! If a real people like my work from CA or NY, a sale would be awesome with all the views I have received from those locations! I keep waiting...

An earlier thread discussing the Kista bot - http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2172371


~ Wendy
http://www.art166.net/artist-sos.html

its best not to even look because it doesn't matter one way or the other. bots are a good thing, they are bees for search engines, and they do come from everywhere. if you not getting bots, your not getting seen. i think bots come in more often the more often you advertise.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I like your answer Mike! I have lots of bees and they are making honey-Sweet!.. I'll take that! :)

So that's where all my bees went.

they definitely come swarming when you advertise or link the image. I've started tweeting recently and usually within a few minutes I'll have about 26 bot views...figure that is a good thing :o)

Murray, you're funny! Thanks all for the input..I think I "get it" now !

?? Really? People can do this on FAA? Last comment is spam! Geez, some people! I am a working artist. Maybe he was telling me my art sucks and to get a different job?? lol Whatever

yeah, they can. they hit like 30 threads before termination. they really need to spend that money on a spell check though. i'm not sure what a labtop is, unless he's a chemist or something.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

lol..and actualie, haz,resently but amazingly gorgeous is correct! Just checked and it's a closed account.

I banned him fairly quickly then Abbie deleted him but I haven't caught all the threads and deleted every post yet.

On a separate note, howdy to a fellow Pensacolian.

sounds like a new kind of medicine...

or soda

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Visits from people using wireless internet devices or using those servers will show up as from a handful of locations around the world where the servers are located. The locations shown are the server locations not the actual place the person is viewing from. This is easily tested.

@ JC- Well Hello! I didn't realize you were here. Great Photography. You then would understand this painting." Pensacolaliens" -Lots of people don't get it. Do you do Gallery Nights?




@ Bradford-Thanks. I was starting to understand better since I asked. I'm not going to worry about the views much from now on.

I do



And some, though I need to work the co-op gallery I am in for some gallery nights in the near future, probably at the end of summer.

How about yourself?

Lol. Awesome, JoNet. And a Labtop, Mike, might be the lap a person's Labrador parks his/her head.

I've been finding these swarms of hits too. They are from web crawlers that add content to search engines, e.g., I noticed that, all of a sudden, if I Google for my name and the name of a photo, it comes right up on Google.

If you're wondering where they come from, linger on the link until the IP(a series of numbers and periods) pops up; this is the network address of the computer that's crawling your pictures. Then copy that IP and go to Whois, where you can look up the owner. In addition to the hits from Kista (a European service), most of what came to my pictures from Wilmington, New York and Beverly Hills and are all from Amazon. Cupertino comes from Apple.

Nothing about this is scary or evil; it's just how search engines index web content. There's nothing magical in Google searches. In fact, many search terms are examined by living humans (subcontractors, teleworkers) who see if the search term matches the results of purely mechanical crawlers and bots. In my former life I used to do this for a government web site in order to allow people to search for things like "Goshogolly State Park" or "Kismet Highway". All those hits, however, are good news-bad news. On the one hand, it's not genuine interest from a buyer, on the other, it does put your pictures into search engines, so if someone IS looking for you, they can find you (at FAA that is, not in person).

Yes, JC. I have been doing the Artist Row @ Seville for a year now and I Love it! Looking forward to this Friday!


Doug..thanks for all the tips. Never knew all that info. I think you just summed it up for me! Thanks.

Cool beans. I will have my tent next spring and will at least try a few.

I will be sure to look for you. Would love to see your photography in person too. I think you would do well in gallery night on the streets!

I have it in Quayside Gallery in Jackson Square downtown. I would normally be working the gallery this Saturday but my son is in town so I rearranged my schedule.

I will definitely swing by your tent at some point though probably bot this Friday.

Beverly Hills bot may not be coming from Beverly Hills but rather New Jersey.

Country: United States
Region: New Jersey
City: Woodbridge
Postal Code: 07095
Latitude/Longitude: 40.552502 / -74.291496
ISP: "Merck and Co."
Organization: "Merck and Co."
Host Name: ec2-54-82-159-153.compute-1.amazonaws.com

IP address is numbered 54.82.159.153. This IP address is affiliated with United States, and fixed within Woodbridge, New Jersey. IP Country code is US. IP address ISP is "Merck and Co.", organization is "Merck and Co.". It is also assigned to a hostname ec2-54-82-159-153.compute-1.amazonaws.com. IP address longitude is -74.291496 and latitude is 40.552502. Postal code of this IP is 07095 and area code is 732.

I like the views (not bots of course) because its a good gauge to see if my marketing is reaching people.

Louis, Beverly Hills comes from all over, not just the one IP address you grabbed info on.
Lots of cell phones route through BH and NY

I mentioned this before, these are search engine hits, they "crawl" web sites and refresh their content - "If you're wondering where they come from, linger on the link until the IP(a series of numbers and periods) pops up; this is the network address of the computer that's crawling your pictures. Then copy that IP and go to Whois - http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-54-221-0-0-1/pft , where you can look up the owner. In addition to the hits from Kista (a European service), most of what came to my pictures from Wilmington, New York and Beverly Hills and are all from Amazon. Cupertino comes from Apple.

Nothing about this is scary or evil; it's just how search engines index web content. There's nothing magical in Google searches. In fact, many search terms are examined by living humans (subcontractors, teleworkers) who see if the search term matches the results of purely mechanical crawlers and bots. In my former life I used to do this for a government web site in order to allow people to search for things like "Goshogolly State Park" or "Kismet Highway". All those hits, however, are good news-bad news. On the one hand, it's not genuine interest from a buyer, on the other, it does put your pictures into search engines, so if someone IS looking for you, they can find you (at FAA that is, not in person)."

FYI - If you go to Google and search for doug swanson columns of the lincoln memorial, the top listing will be my FAA photo with that name. Pulling in content is how you get into the search engines.

Beverly Hills is several visitors, it is the main router for some mobile visitors. We have customers living int he actual place AND it is a search bot.