Bots Or Other Issue? Anyone Have A Tonne Of Views From Russia Or Deleware?

90% of my views are BOTS...

ya i figure thats usually how mine are too but i have never seen such a large stretch for so many days from the same place

Put the word "bots" in the search box and you'll see the answer.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2704135

even if you knew these people were taking all of your work and selling it on some shady market at rock bottom prices... there isn't anything you can do about it. all of these are bots and as annoying as they are, you need them. they are the bees of the internet.

and yes they are copying images, google bots do that all the time. its another way to be searched. but only the small one.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Delaware has been hitting everyone, but now i think NY is taking the lead.

TL Mair
http://tlmair.com

Hi Alanna,

Although it can be different for each occurrence, as the IP address is the real thing you need to find (by hovering your cursor over the place text), rather than the text.

Looking at few of yours though:

Wilmington DE, is tagged from many IPs, some of them are:

52.21.63.218
52.0.92.171
52.21.27.183
52.20.48.65
52.20.135.203
52.20.116.96

They are all from Amazon EC2 service, this is a cloud solution that you can by from Amazon and run your own server in the cloud, and you normally cant actually tell who uses them, as anyone can buy cloud services from them.

You can see this here: http://myip.ms/info/whois/52.21.63.218

However, those specific IPs are used by Pinterest. Since Pinterest is a large company, alot is logged about them. You can see from this services like project honey pot (see below), these IPs generally come with the Pinterest Bot USER_AGENT description. Although all of this can be faked, I highly doubt it since there are so many of them, and its widely reported.

So, those ones are Pinterest scanning your pages, normally when someone pins your image. But I think there may well be a problem at the moment, as it seems like there is a massive influx of them. Maybe Pinterest is having problems. Or Pinterest is just doing lots of indexing for whatever reason, or their bot has gone crazy and they haven't figured it out yet.

The Moscow Russia ones again, depends on the IP, but from some of your images, those IPs are:
217.69.133.5
217.69.133.3
217.69.133.239
216.69.133.194

These all resolve back to the mail.ru host, which is a huge Russian internet company, that has services like Email, Social sites, IM and Search.. also Product price comparisons.

Although its impossible to actually know which part of the company is doing the scraping, I would probably bet on the Price Comparisons part, and they are probably scraping product information out to include in some database or something, that they then sell on to other companies.... is my guess.

These links are what I have used to determine its both Pinterest and Mail.RU from the IPs:

Pinterest: http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_52.21.63.218
Mail.RU: http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_217.69.133.5

HTHs,

Rob.

Why are so many people wasting their time even looking at this stuff? There is NOTHING to gain by even looking at the views. They mean nothing. And like Mike said, there is absolutely NOTHING at all you can do about anything that you may think you discovered about the bots.

Every page on the Internet has all of the same exact bots but no one even knows they are there because no one reports them.

If you are not making all the sale you would like to make, you are wasting your time trying to glean something from your views or understanding all about bots.

We would actually be better off it FAA did not even show us the views. The are nothing but a distraction the way they are structured, imho.

Well, I'm a complete geek with all things computer related, and I have heavily been involved in Telecommunications and the internet for many years, so its fun to me :)

I find it useful to filter out the bots and then see when I get spikes in views and such from certain things I do, like write a blog entries and link back to FAA, or post on FB,Twitter, Tumblr or something.

There are so many channels nowadays that you need to keep up with, I need to prioritise.

I try to learn what things I do that gets the more hits, so I can concentrate on that method of marketing, and filtering the bots out is a must for that to work.

I dont want to be posting and spending time on posting to FB if I hardly get any click throughs, I would prefer to spend more time on another method that generates more views, as generally more views (not from bots) = more sales. Of course I will still post to FB, but just not as much if I figure it doesn't give as many returns.

And of course you're not gonna identify 100% of bot traffic, but you can determined the bulk of it.

"Why are so many people wasting their time even looking at this stuff?"


It's a distraction from talking about the weather, lions, copyrights, "what is art", etc, etc. Doesn't seem to be hurting anything or anyone, and it's not an "image dump", so there's no harm in people wanting to discuss the continuing bots. One of the nice things about the forums is no one is forced to read each and every thread, or comment in them.

"One of the nice things about the forums is no one is forced to read each and every thread, or comment in them."

Yes but you do it anyway, as a lot of us do.

The point is, some people actually think there may be some value to trying to understand those number. If that is the case, they are wasting their time.

If you have time to kill, and are not some of those starting threads about how they are not selling anything, then fine waste you time anyway you want. But don't start a thread or pile on when others are whining about and even trashing FAA because you are not selling when you are spending you time on something that will not help you sell.

I am not necessarily accusing anyone specif of that, but in general, a whole lot of that stuff goes on here. And people yet to come to this thread my want to know that.

And I certainly agree with you about the image dumps. That may be an even bigger waste of time. lol

"...If you have time to kill, and are not some of those starting threads about how they are not selling anything, then fine waste you time anyway you want. But don't start a thread or pile on when others are whining about and even trashing FAA because you are not selling when you are spending you time on something that will not help you sell..."

Haven't seen anyone doing any trashing of the site in this specific thread, but the overall point is that people are free to spend their time reading and posting however they choose, and even to talk about their lack of sales, unless their words go above and beyond the limits of the forum rules.

until the bots become drone aware, and they come to visit your house, hovering and scanning, its just one of those things that won't help you much. some bots visit when people do a search on you. others come by to generate new content for a new server some place running a search. other bots are bored and like art.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

"Haven't seen anyone doing any trashing of the site in this specific thread"

And I never said there was anyone trashing in THIS thread. Read the post I made.

"And I never said there was anyone trashing in THIS thread. Read the post I made."


I was making a general comment. You need to stop with the all caps thing on words. Regular conversational tones work much better.

Judging simply by word volume, some of us have more time on their hands then others.

I love bots. On one of my images I got like 45,000 hits, not sure they were all bots but it was like points and it thrilled me. Of course that is silly, but I treat it like a video game. Bots are like points and it is all pointless.

I WILL TAKE THAT UNDER ADVISEMENT! NOT! LOL

And you are one of them ED. You are in every thread...

(I see the usual peanut gallery is gathering)

"And you are one of them ED. You are in every thread..."


The only way to know that, is for you to be looking at every thread also. ;)

As a newcomer to FAA, I have found this conversation very enlightening. I wondered why the same cities kept showing up over and over again in my views.

Hey you never seen me say I wasn't. I think this is the best entertainment on the net. lol

Sort of like the it's a distraction from talking about the weather, lions, copyrights, "what is art", etc, etc. Doesn't seem to be hurting anything or anyone, and it's not an "image dump", so there's no harm in people wanting to discuss the continuing bots. One of the nice things about the forums is no one is forced to read each and every thread, or comment in them.

(I think head those works before somewhere.)

I sit here working on other stuff and the threads are just exactly that, a distraction. I know that a lot of what I post Greg seems to bother you. I get that. But I don't care. Maybe you need to follow your own advice when you tell I don't have to read every post.

Don't for the life of me seen why you felt it necessary to start an argument. But you know me, I am always game for goof food fight.

"I WILL TAKE THAT UNDER ADVISEMENT! NOT! LOL"


Go play some golf, Floyd.

Kathy Kelly, Mike gave you the best answer for that .... pit bots in the search on the top of the main discussion page. Everything you want to know about bots will show up.

Or follow these links.

Internet bot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_bot

Web crawler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

FAA is the only place where they put that those bot figures in your views. But every page on the internet are visited by the same exact bots.

I have 12 other on line galleries. None of them post the bot visits in my views. I get real visits by real potential buyers.

I don't know why FAA does it. People have asked but not sure I have ever seen and answer. It is what it is.

Yup... 10:AM tee time ... how did you know? lol

Time to get going... much as I hate having to deprive you of my wit and wisdom! lol

Floyd and Mike - thanks for info. I would prefer to see the "real" view numbers in the FAA counts but understand the role that bots play in search engine optimization. Personally, I was impressed how quickly FAA was able to get my site and images out onto Google, especially with a common name like Kathy Kelly. Now, my Corgi Club members locate my images easily just by typing my name and "Corgi."

Great info Floyd!!

Thanks very much!

Cheers! :^)

jrr

Great info Floyd!!

Thanks very much!

Cheers! :^)

jrr

I find looking at views very useful to see if my marketing is working. I am getting a lot from Wilmington, but that one I mostly ignore as it has a random bot pattern. Keep in mind most traffic is routed through a very small amount of humongous servers. If you look up the IP address and see it is Amazon that doesn't tell you anything. Amazon is a huge server supplier that is leasing to internet service providers and businesses. The servers show as one of several cities. Those cities have nothing whatsoever to do with where the visitor is actually located.

If you are curious abouta visitor it may be helpful to look up the IP address. But more often than not is will not help much. But sometimes it helps a real lot and can lead you right to the address of a big buyer as was the case when I got a phone call that ended in a $900 sale last month. It helped me to verify that he was who he said he was.

Here's how to get the Ip address. How you use that info is up to you.
http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2598106

Thanks for the link Bradford!

If it wasn't for Moscow, I would have almost no views. lol

YATAB... (Yet another thread about bots).

Come on... Another thread about bots?

Here's another: :)


http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2704135

Thanks for closing my thread and pointing me here, I was just curious and I indeed got my answer(s).
(Being Genuine, not sarcastic.)

Thx,
RR.

Actually Floyd this stuff has been very useful to me. Now I can go back to believing that my lack of sales is due to a lack of (actual human) views.
Time to go back to reading your's and Mike Savad's blogs for marketing advice.

PS between 12 online galleries and all of the posting you do here I don't know how you have time to take pictures. Let alone play golf. =)