Difference between revisions of "Aboutus:Bot"

Revision as of 22:15, 3 December 2013

The main job of the AboutUs Bot is to generate basic initial pages and analysis about websites. The bot pulls initial page data once when a page is first create. Website analysis may be pulled multiple times but is cached to prevent continuous access by the bot. We want the bot to be well behaved, if you are seeing otherwise please help/contact contact us and let us know.

User-Agent String

The AboutUs Bot User-Agent string contains the following:

AboutUsBot/VERSION (PURPOSE; http://www.aboutus.org/Aboutus:Bot; help@aboutus.org)

For example:

AboutUsBot/Harpy (Website Analysis; http://www.aboutus.org/Aboutus:Bot; help@aboutus.org)

The current AboutUs Bot version is Harpy.

Blocking the AboutUs Bot

Using a robots.txt file, you can choose to not have the About Us Bot access your website. This doesn't mean that we won't create a page for your website. Our members still have the opportunity to contribute their own content describing your site.

To prevent the AboutUs Bot from accessing your site in the future, please include the following lines in your /robots.txt file.

User-agent: AboutUsBot

Disallow: /

Other supported bot prevention methods

The AboutUs Bot will also honor a rule like this in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

For more information about robots.txt, read this article.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{DISPLAYTITLE:The AboutUs Bot}}
-The main job of the AboutUs Bot is to generate basic pages and analysis about websites.
+The main job of the AboutUs Bot is to generate basic initial pages and analysis about websites. The bot pulls initial page data once when a page is first create. Website analysis may be pulled multiple times but is cached to prevent continuous access by the bot. We want the bot to be well behaved, if you are seeing otherwise please [[help/contact contact us]] and let us know.
-== How do I prevent the bot from gathering info about my site ==
+==User-Agent String==
-Using a [[Learn/How-To-Use-Robots.txt|robots.txt file]], you can choose not to have your future AboutUs pages initialized with selected content from your website or analyzed. This doesn't mean that we won't create a Wiki Page for your website.  Our members still have the opportunity to contribute their own content describing your site, as well as adding their own reviews.
+The AboutUs Bot User-Agent string contains the following:
-To prevent the AboutUs Bot from accessing your site in the future, please include the following lines in your /robots.txt file.
-:: '''User-agent: AboutUsBot'''
-:: '''Disallow: /'''
-:The AboutUs Bot will include the following in it's User-Agent string:
 :: '''<nowiki>AboutUsBot/VERSION (PURPOSE; http://www.aboutus.org/Aboutus:Bot; help@aboutus.org)</nowiki>'''
@@ Line 18: / Line 11: @@
 The current AboutUs Bot version is <strong>Harpy</strong>.
-:Please note that the current AboutUs Bot behavior is to visit each site only once to initialize the page.
+==Blocking the AboutUs Bot==
+Using a [[Learn/How-To-Use-Robots.txt|robots.txt file]], you can choose to not have the About Us Bot access your website. This doesn't mean that we won't create a page for your website.  Our members still have the opportunity to contribute their own content describing your site.
+To prevent the AboutUs Bot from accessing your site in the future, please include the following lines in your /robots.txt file.
+:: '''User-agent: AboutUsBot'''
+:: '''Disallow: /'''
-; Other supported bot prevention methods
+Other supported bot prevention methods
 :The AboutUs Bot will also honor a rule like this in your robots.txt file:
@@ Line 28: / Line 27: @@
 ''For more information about [[Learn/How-To-Use-Robots.txt|robots.txt]], read [[Learn/How-To-Use-Robots.txt|this article]].''
-== What about my address? ==
-: Even though your address may be publicly available in various [[Whois services]], if your website has a robots.txt file that denies access to AboutUs:Bot, we will honor your intentions and not publish your contact details on your AboutUs page.
-: Please be aware that if we have already published your address, it was because it was available to us through a popular 3rd party API service.  Your address is probably completely visible in your WHOIS record, and if you want your address to be kept private in the future, you can subscribe to an address protection service through your registrar.
-== How do I remove my AboutUs page? ==
-: Completely erasing page content is considered by our editors to be a [[TestEdit]] and the page will be restored.  If you would like to remove the content created by the bot (Title & Description) and contact details (Address & Contact), please only remove '''the content''' in those sections.  Other sections, including the reviews, thumbnail, language, external links, and contributed content should remain.  See [[No Bot Policy]] for more information.