Bots - What are they, and what do they do?

Bots.

What are they?

Bot's, short for "Robots"
A quick definition from Wikipedia, verified by numerous sites across the web.

<BLOCKQUOTE>Wikipedia wrote:Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey.

In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

What do these robot's do?

99% of Internet Bots usually just "reference" your site to increase their knowledge of it, and give the most accurate & up-to-date information about your site.
In addition, when the Google Bot visit's your site, it also is giving you a "Cache" version of your site.


So what's the other, remaining 1% of these bot's?

Well, this 1% is an astonishingly large amount of bot's.
These very rare & very few bots can do what the other bot's cannot do.
They can:

• Register on your site
  
• Create NEW topic's on your site
  
• Reply to current topic's on your site
  
• Spam your forum
  

So, how exactly can I tell who's a bot, and who's not a bot?

Well, there's no rule of thumb to detect weather or not it is a bot unfortunately.
However they generally have a really "out there" names such as "123456789sdjhiuj" which can also be a spammer, the other way you could tell is it has a really stupid email address.


Thanks to Darren1 for the info, and letting me copy it.

Nice FAQ. I never knew that they could spam sites..