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In total there are 849 users online :: 2 registered, 0 hidden and 847 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Most users ever online was 1376 on Sun Apr 27, 2025 11:41 am
That is on my forum
https://www.multifinanceit.com/forum/
Do you think it is spam bot networks that inflate the numbers
New prompt:That large number of guests on your forum could indeed be a sign of spam bot activity. While it's normal for forums to have guests browsing, a significantly high ratio of guests to registered users, especially with a large overall number, can be suspicious.
Here's why spam bot networks might inflate those numbers and some things to consider:
**Why Spam Bots Can Inflate Guest Numbers:**
* **Crawling and Indexing:** Spam bots often crawl forums to find websites to link to, places to post spam content, or email addresses to harvest. These bots might register as guests to view more content.
* **Simple Access:** Accessing a forum as a guest often requires fewer restrictions than registering. Bots are designed for efficiency, so they might prefer the path of least resistance.
* **Evading Detection:** By not registering, bots can sometimes make it harder to track their activity and link it back to a single source.
* **Testing Vulnerabilities:** Some bots might browse as guests to identify potential vulnerabilities in your forum software or security measures.
**Factors to Consider in Your Case:**
* **Guest Activity:** Are these guests actively viewing threads, or is it just a high number with no real interaction? Check your forum logs for guest activity patterns. A large number of guests with very short visit durations and no page views beyond the main page could indicate bot activity.
* **Recent Spikes:** Did this sudden increase in guest numbers coincide with any other unusual activity on your forum, such as a surge in spam posts or registrations (even if the registration count is low)?
* **Time of Day:** Is the high guest count consistent throughout the day, or are there specific times when it peaks? Bot activity might follow certain patterns.
* **IP Addresses:** If your forum software allows it, investigate the IP addresses of the guests. A large number of guests originating from a small range of IP addresses or known hosting providers sometimes used by bots can be a red flag.
* **Usernames of Registered Users:** While you only have two registered users online at that moment, have you noticed any patterns in recent registrations (e.g., generic usernames, suspicious email domains, no profile information)? This could indicate bot accounts that might later contribute to guest browsing.
* **Most Users Ever Online:** The fact that the "most users ever online" was just a few days prior (Sun Apr 27, 2025) and significantly higher (1376) further suggests a recent surge in online users, which warrants investigation.
**What You Can Do:**
* **Implement Stronger Anti-Spam Measures:**
* **CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA:** These challenges can help differentiate between humans and bots during registration and sometimes even for guest posting or viewing certain content.
* **Honeypot Fields:** Add hidden form fields that only bots are likely to fill. If these fields are filled upon submission, you can block the user/guest.
* **Email Verification:** Require new registered users to verify their email addresses before they can fully access the forum.
* **IP Blocking and Rate Limiting:** Identify and block suspicious IP addresses or implement rate limits on actions like page views or guest posting.
* **Web Application Firewall (WAF):** A WAF can help filter out malicious traffic, including some bot activity.
* **Anti-Spam Plugins:** Many forum platforms have plugins like Akismet or StopForumSpam that can help detect and block spam.
* **Implement Time Restrictions:** Prevent form submissions or actions that occur too quickly, as bots tend to operate much faster than humans.
* **Monitor Forum Activity:** Regularly check your forum statistics, logs, and recent user activity for any unusual patterns.
* **Consider Requiring Registration for More Actions:** While it might slightly reduce casual browsing, requiring registration to view certain parts of the forum or to participate in any way can deter some bots.
* **Analyze Traffic Sources:** Use web analytics tools (like Google Analytics, if integrated with your forum) to see where your traffic is coming from. Unusual spikes in traffic from specific regions or sources could indicate bot activity.
**In conclusion, the high number of guests on your forum, especially compared to registered users and the recent "most users ever online" count, is a strong indicator that spam bot networks could be inflating your numbers. Implementing stricter anti-spam measures and closely monitoring your forum activity are crucial steps to address this potential issue.**
I have also noted that Semrush [Bot] and Ahrefs [Bot] visit the forum daily and sometimes more than once a day while Google [Bot] and Bing [Bot] visit more seldom.
What is your opinion on that
robots.txtThat's a very insightful observation. The difference in crawling frequency between SEO analysis bots (like Semrush and Ahrefs) and search engine bots (like Google and Bing) is quite typical and reflects their distinct purposes. Here's my opinion on that:
**It's Expected Behavior Due to Different Objectives:**
* **SEMrush [Bot] and Ahrefs [Bot]: Focused on Data Acquisition for SEO Analysis.** These bots are the workhorses behind comprehensive SEO tool suites. Their primary goal is to gather vast amounts of data about websites, including:
* **Backlinks:** Identifying and analyzing the links pointing to your site and your competitors' sites. This requires frequent crawls to keep up with the dynamic nature of the web.
* **Keywords and Rankings:** Tracking keyword positions and understanding the content landscape. Regular crawls help them monitor changes.
* **Site Structure and Technical SEO:** Auditing websites for technical issues like broken links, crawlability problems, and site speed. These audits are often performed daily or on a recurring schedule set by users.
* **Content Analysis:** Examining content for quality, keyword usage, and other SEO-related factors.
Therefore, Semrush and Ahrefs bots tend to crawl websites frequently to maintain the freshness and accuracy of their large databases, which their users rely on for competitive analysis and website improvement. Their frequent visits to your forum suggest that either your forum or websites linking to it are being actively analyzed by users of these tools.
* **Google [Bot] and Bing [Bot]: Focused on Indexing for Search Results.** These bots have the monumental task of crawling and indexing the entire web to provide search results to users. Their objectives are:
* **Discovering New Content:** Finding new pages and websites to add to their index.
* **Updating Existing Content:** Re-crawling pages to detect changes and keep their index current.
* **Understanding Website Structure and Content:** Analyzing the content and organization of websites to rank them appropriately for relevant search queries.
* **Respecting Server Resources:** Google and Bing are mindful of not overloading web servers with excessive crawl requests, as this could negatively impact user experience on those sites. They employ algorithms to determine an optimal crawl rate based on factors like website update frequency, authority, and server capacity.
The less frequent visits from Googlebot and Bingbot to your forum could indicate that:
* **Your content is not updated very frequently:** If your forum mainly consists of discussions that don't change daily, the search engines might not see a need to crawl it as often.
* **Your forum might not have a very high authority yet:** More established and authoritative websites tend to be crawled more frequently.
* **They have already indexed the important parts of your forum:** Once the major content and structure are understood, they might reduce the crawl frequency unless significant changes are detected.
**Key Takeaway:**
The differing crawl frequencies are not necessarily a cause for concern. It's a natural consequence of the different roles these bots play in the web ecosystem.
* **Frequent visits from Semrush and Ahrefs bots likely mean your forum is being analyzed for SEO purposes, which can be a neutral or even positive sign (e.g., if competitors are monitoring your success or if you or others are using these tools to improve your forum).** However, very excessive crawling from any bot could strain your server resources.
* **Less frequent visits from Googlebot and Bingbot don't automatically mean there's a problem. It could simply reflect their assessment of your forum's update frequency and authority.** You can monitor your crawl stats in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure they are crawling your important pages adequately. If you publish new content regularly, you might expect to see more frequent visits over time.
**What to Consider:**
* **Server Load:** If you notice any performance issues on your forum coinciding with high bot activity from any source, you might need to investigate ways to manage their crawl rate (e.g., through `robots.txt` or server-level configurations).
* **Robots.txt:** Ensure your `robots.txt` file is correctly configured to allow the search engine bots to crawl the parts of your forum you want indexed while disallowing access to any private or irrelevant areas. SEO analysis bots generally respect `robots.txt` as well.
* **Sitemap:** Having an up-to-date XML sitemap can help search engine bots discover and crawl your content more efficiently.
In summary, the crawling patterns you've observed are typical. Semrush and Ahrefs bots are data gatherers for SEO analysis and thus crawl more frequently, while Googlebot and Bingbot are focused on indexing the web for search and optimize their crawl rates based on various factors. Monitor your server performance and ensure your `robots.txt` and sitemap are properly configured.
The requested page could not be found.
I thought that was automatically created and updated during installation and forum upgrade.
https://www.multifinanceit.com/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /2015/
Disallow: /2016/
Disallow: /financelinks/
Disallow: /itlinks/
Disallow: /links/
Disallow: /olinks/
Disallow: /apps/
Disallow: /bitcoin/
Disallow: /blogs/
Disallow: /indicators/
Disallow: /banners/
Disallow: /buttons/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /email/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /include/
Disallow: /javascript/
Disallow: /styling/
Disallow: /Trellian/
Disallow: /walmart/
Disallow: /nanotechnology/
Disallow: /multifinanceit/
Disallow: /Litterature/
Disallow: /carp/
Disallow: /EWI/
Sitemap: http://www.multifinanceit.com/sitemap.htm
Very old and should be updated.
Do you have a proposal for a robots.txt
file?
You are absolutely right! The `robots.txt` file is crucial for guiding search engine bots and other web crawlers on how to interact with your website. The fact that `/forum/robots.txt` is missing and your main `robots.txt` is outdated with numerous disallows and an `.htm` sitemap file suggests it definitely needs an update.
Here's a proposal for a more modern and generally recommended `robots.txt` file for your forum, along with explanations:
```
User-agent: *
Disallow: /ucp.php
Disallow: /adm/
Disallow: /posting.php
Disallow: /memberlist.php?mode=group
Disallow: /memberlist.php?mode=searchuser
Disallow: /search.php
Disallow: /app.php/
# Consider disallowing these if they generate low-value content for search engines
Disallow: /viewforum.php?f=*&start=*
Disallow: /*?sid=
# Allow access to important static resources
Allow: /assets/
Allow: /styles/*/theme/images/
Allow: /images/smilies/
Sitemap: https://www.multifinanceit.com/sitemap.xml
```
**Explanation of the Directives:**
* **`User-agent: *`**: This line specifies that the following rules apply to all web robots. You can create specific rules for individual bots if needed (e.g., `User-agent: Googlebot`).
* **`Disallow:`**: This directive tells the specified user-agents not to access the listed paths.
* `/ucp.php`: This is typically the user control panel where registered users manage their profiles and settings. Search engines don't need to index these pages.
* `/adm/`: This is usually the administrator control panel, which should be kept private and not accessible to bots.
* `/posting.php`: This is the script used for posting new topics and replies. Indexing these pages directly is generally not useful.
* `/memberlist.php?mode=group` and `/memberlist.php?mode=searchuser`: These are dynamic pages for viewing user groups and searching for members, which often don't provide unique, valuable content for search engines.
* `/search.php`: Search result pages within your forum are usually low-value content for external search engines to index. They can also lead to a large number of crawl requests.
* `/app.php/`: This is a common entry point for extensions in phpBB (which your forum software appears to be based on). Disallowing it broadly might be too restrictive, so you might need to adjust this based on specific extensions.
* `viewforum.php?f=*&start=*`: This disallows paginated forum view pages beyond the first page. Indexing many paginated pages can dilute your content's value. However, consider if you want later pages of very active threads indexed.
* `/*?sid=`: This attempts to prevent the indexing of pages with session IDs in the URL, which can create duplicate content issues.
* **`Allow:`**: This directive overrides previous `Disallow` rules for specific paths. It's used here to ensure that important static resources needed for the proper rendering of your forum are accessible to bots.
* `/assets/`: This directory likely contains CSS, JavaScript, and other essential assets for your forum's theme and functionality.
* `/styles/*/theme/images/`: This allows access to the images used in your forum's theme, which are important for visual presentation. The `*` acts as a wildcard for your theme directory name.
* `/images/smilies/`: This allows access to your forum's smilies, which are part of the user-generated content.
* **`Sitemap: https://www.multifinanceit.com/sitemap.xml`**: This line points search engines to the location of your XML sitemap. **It's crucial that you generate and link to an XML sitemap (usually `sitemap.xml`), not an `.htm` file.** XML sitemaps are the standard format for informing search engines about all the crawlable pages on your site.
**Important Next Steps:**
1. **Generate an XML Sitemap:** You need to generate a proper XML sitemap for your forum. Most forum software like phpBB has built-in tools or extensions to create an XML sitemap. Look for options related to "Sitemap" in your admin control panel or search for phpBB sitemap extensions. This sitemap should ideally include all your important forum pages, threads, and potentially user profiles (if you want them indexed). Once generated, it will likely be located at a URL like `https://www.multifinanceit.com/sitemap.xml`.
2. **Replace Your Existing `robots.txt`:** Create a new text file named `robots.txt` with the content of the proposed file above (making sure to update the `Sitemap` directive with the correct URL of your *XML* sitemap). Upload this `robots.txt` file to the **root directory** of your website (i.e., `https://www.multifinanceit.com/robots.txt`).
3. **Remove the Old `/robots.txt`:** Ensure there isn't a `robots.txt` file within your `/forum/` subdirectory. All `robots.txt` directives should reside in the root directory.
4. **Test Your `robots.txt`:** You can use tools like the Google Robots.txt Tester in Google Search Console to check if your new `robots.txt` is correctly formatted and if it's blocking or allowing access to the intended URLs.
5. **Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines:** Once your XML sitemap is in place and linked in your `robots.txt`, submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This helps them discover and index your forum content more efficiently.
**Regarding the Disallowed Directories in Your Old `robots.txt`:**
Review the directories you had previously disallowed. Some of them (like `/cgi-bin/`, `/include/`, `/javascript/`, `/styling/`, `/Trellian/`) are generally good to keep disallowed as they often contain scripts or backend files that shouldn't be indexed.
However, directories like `/images/`, `/blogs/`, `/indicators/`, `/banners/`, `/buttons/`, `/bitcoin/`, `/nanotechnology/`, `/multifinanceit/`, `/Litterature/`, `/carp/`, and `/EWI/` seem to contain content. **Unless these sections contain low-quality or duplicate content you specifically want to hide from search engines, you should likely remove the `Disallow:` rules for them in the new `robots.txt` to allow them to be indexed.**
The `/2015/` and `/2016/` disallows suggest you might have date-based archives. Consider if you want these indexed. If the content within them is valuable and unique, you should remove these disallows.
**Customization:**
This is a general proposal. You might need to customize it further based on the specific structure and content of your forum and any specific SEO goals you have. For example, if you have specific extensions that create unique URLs you want to disallow, you would add those rules.
By implementing a proper `robots.txt` file and an XML sitemap, you will provide clearer instructions to search engine bots, helping them crawl and index your forum more effectively. Remember to generate an XML sitemap and update the `Sitemap` directive accordingly!