asked on

Stop BOTs from hitting my <a href links

I understand the ROBOTS.TXT file that people to prevent bots from accessing certain pages on your site, but I don't want them to not visit all my pages. In fact, I want them to visit all my pages and see all the reciprocal links I use on one of my sites... but just NOT actually click them as though they were a user.

Is there a way to prevent a bot from pretending to be a user and clicking through a text link on my website?

I have (for example) text links like sponsored by abc company where abc company is a hyperlink to abc company's website. I also have a text hyperlink that says CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO REPORT THIS USER on a blog section of my site. Every day I get at least 6 emails from the script that is executed when someone clicks the REPORT THIS USER link. I don't want it to be a form where I validate a human (captcha) to report the user, because nobody will take the time.

In addition, when these bots click by SPONSORED BY links, it messes up the statistics of clickthroughs I'm tracking.

Any ideas?

I've found an interesting HTTP_REFFERER snippet that someone said they use, but don't know the semantics on how to get that to work.

SOLUTION

Zvonko

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Zvonko

Of course only for the links that you want to protect. If you change all links to script then you go to danger to disable users that have active scripting turned off.

SidFishes

the answer is that you can limit the problem but not get rid of it entirely as user agent -can- be spoofed

using some modified code from Ben Nadel http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:67.view you could try something like this

<cfscript>
// Here, we are using short-circuit evaluation on the
// IF statement with the most popular search engines at the top of the 
// list. This will help us minimize the amount of time that it takes to 
// evaluate the list.
if (
	(NOT Len(CGI.http_user_agent)) OR 
	FindNoCase( "Slurp", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Googlebot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "BecomeBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "msnbot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Mediapartners-Google", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "ZyBorg", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "RufusBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "EMonitor", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "researchbot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "IP2MapBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "GigaBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Jeeves", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Exabot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "SBIder", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "findlinks", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "YahooSeeker", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "MMCrawler", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "MJ12bot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "OutfoxBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "jBrowser", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "ZiggsBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Java", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "PMAFind", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Blogbeat", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "TurnitinBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "ConveraCrawler", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Ocelli", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Labhoo", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Validator", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "sproose", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "oBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "MyFamilyBot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Girafabot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "aipbot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "ia_archiver", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Snapbot", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "Larbin", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "psycheclone", CGI.http_user_agent ) OR
	FindNoCase( "ColdFusion", CGI.http_user_agent )
		){
	 
link = false;
 
} else {
	 
	link = true;
}
</cfscript>
 
<cfif link eq true>
<a href="#">Click Here</a>
<cfelse>
No Link
</cfif>

Open in new window

SidFishes

btw if you want to test how it works just add a line

or FindNoCase( "mozilla", CGI.http_user_agent )

for firefox

or FindNoCase( "IE", CGI.http_user_agent )

for IE

SOLUTION

Zvonko

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day6

ASKER

I see the regexpr solution, but does this still allow bots/spiders to know that I have reciprocal links to sites? I understand that in SEO, reciprocal links (or links to higher traffic sites and from their site to mine) can help the rankings.

Does the bot ignore this link with either the javascript OnClick command and does it still see the destination URL in my raw code and take note of where the link goes? Or does the bot have to actually follow the link to a resolving page to make it verify it as a good link.

SidFishes

what this code does is sets a local variable "link" based on whether it finds a known user agent you then use this variable in the cfif code to determine whether to show a link or not. the bot can't -ignore- the link because it isn't even on the page that is passed to the bot.

afaik, there's no way to have it both ways... you either allow them to follow links or you don't give them the links to follow. YOu can't say to a bot..here's a link but don't follow it, just index it...not how they're built

you can however decide which links you choose to hide from the bots by putting the ones you want to hide in the cfif blocks

SOLUTION

Mr_Nil

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day6

ASKER

where would I put the rel="notfollow" syntax.

black0ps

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but don't most bots not follow links like that. I thought bots index the links and then go to the links later on directly without "click" on the link.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Mr_Nil

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black0ps

Have you tried putting in nocache meta tags? The bot wouldn't take a snapshot of the page. Or are you trying to prevent the page from being accessed altogether by bots to prevent a counter or something?

day6

ASKER

None of these suggestions has worked stopping the bots from activating my script. I've used the OnClick java... the BOT filter CFIF script... and event the rel="nofollow" and it simply doesn't stop it from happening. The reason i know that it is a bot is because it's the exact same time each day and it hits multiple links on multiple pages within a minute or two of each. It actually cached a URL which had variables in it that made my script function for a specific record in my database which now no longer exists.

i've beefed up my code with each of these ideas and nothing works. I even wrote an output to show what browser is hitting my script and it simply reads Mozilla 4/0. each time along with a few other browser types. I presume it's the bot's way of spoofing my script.

Any other ideas?

The NOCACHE meta tag isn't going to stop this since I want spiders to crawl my pages, but just not activate my scripts that are attached to the links on them.

day6

ASKER

I really need help here... the suggestions are not stopping the bots from either hitting the link and/or hitting the script the link goes to after they have cached the path. I wrote a CFIF statement to prevent a bot from running the script but it doesn't stop it.

I really don't want to implement captcha every time a bot exploits a script I have on my site.

Stop BOTs from hitting my &lt;a href links

Stop BOTs from hitting my <a href links