question

[mth74]

At the bottom of the main index page it lists the members who are online there are 2 that dont make sence to me Google Adsense [Bot], and yahoo[bot].What are these??????

[beaconlight]

I have been told they are looking for .info so that if one goes a search there will answers available

[Rudi]

Mike:

Bill is on target. These are bots essentially are non-intrusive data miners that surf the web looking at all kinds of information to update the web index. Ever do a search on say Farmall Cub And then you see all the hits? This is cause these data miners that crawl the web are looking for information to add to their databses etc., so that when a search is posed, answers can be automatically generated. It is a good thing as long as they are passive, unobtrusive and are not harmful. There are some bots that exploit data mining and those you do not want. Google, AdSense, Yahoo and a few others are pretty benign, so they are usually allowed.

[beaconlight]

Thanks for the back up Rudi. You know how to say it better than Ido.

[Bigdog]

The banner ads at the bottom of the page are keyed by words found in the text on the page. The bots scan the page for key words and then display ads that may be related to the topic / topics on the page.