Be my guest

[lookin]

OK, this is weird. At the bottom of the Forums page is a summary of who's on-line. If you're signed in, your name appears. If you're not, it just says 'guest'.

There's a (see full list) link that I hadn't noticed before and I just clicked it. It shows what threads our (currently) 95 'guests' are viewing. What a hodgepodge of threads they're looking at!

It seems incredible that 2 'guests' would currently be viewing OZ's Happy Holidays thread from December and another 'guest' is viewing a Bad News from McDonald's thread from September, 2010. (They may not be there by the time you read this post, but they were there as I was writing it.)

So what gives? Are they all bots crawling and indexing the MER website? Google is usually here and Bing used to crawl the site. But are there really 95 anonymous web-crawling bots here at one time?

Did OZ sign up for some kind of traffic-building service?

Are we being invaded by Russian hackers?

Or do we just have a boundlessly curious assortment of visitors to the MER site?

And should we be ordering in some munchies in case they decide to stick around?

[TotallyOz]

It is kind of funny isn't it? Google indexes pages and when you have a discussion, it can be high up on that page for that keyword.

A few years back, on another site, I talked about a trip to Thailand and seeing the girls in a bar shooting ping pong balls out of their pussy. I think I titled the thread Ping Pong Pussy and because of that I saw a spike in traffic. We were getting thousands of hits from people who were surfing the web looking for Ping Pong Pussy. On night, there were over 100 reading that thread alone. I was shocked! I also had tons of e-mail to the admin account asking for photos of the ping pong pussy girls. Naturally, I thought of opening a site dedicated to that.

[lookin]

Well, I can see how Ping Pong Pussy could bring in a few eyeballs.

But riddle me this: Right now there are 130 'guests' and many of them are checking out Member Profiles. And not just profiles of active members, but also members who first signed up in 2006 and never even posted. Not once. Why would someone be scouring the MER site for member profiles?

And not just someone, but lots of someones?

Some of these Member Profiles have been visited dozens of times, but why? And by whom? And why are so many of them being visited right this very minute by 130 simultaneous 'guests'? (These are in addition to Google, whom we already know is nosy.)

I'm sure there's an easy answer as to who all finds us so interesting but, at the moment, it eludes me.

[MsGuy]

Maybe the Rev. Phelps is looking for new targets to picket?

He might have his whole congregation scoping us out.

[lookin]

Maybe the Rev. Phelps is looking for new targets to picket?

He might have his whole congregation scoping us out.

I guess anything's possible.

There have always been lots of guests at MER. It's just that this is the first time I recall that we had a link that showed us what they were looking at. I always figured a few were lurking and reading posts, and that many were reading reviews, but it now seems that they're just crawling into all the site's nooks and crannies. It doesn't seem that there's necessarily an intelligent being behind it.

So maybe your theory is the one to beat.

Still leaves the question, though, of why so many at a time, all the time?

[TotallyOz]

To my knowledge, we have always had the ability to see what threads people are viewing. I have used it for years on Invision.

As to why someone or a bot is on members profiles, threads, I would think that Google is not the only search engine. I use several SEO software packages and there are thousands of other search engines including Google Thailand, etc. I am sure they do crawl websites constantly.

[MsGuy]

So maybe your theory is the one to beat.

YAY!! I'm NUMBER ONE, I'm NUMBER ONE!!!

Still leaves the question, though, of why so many at a time, all the time?

I haven't the foggiest. Still it is kind of weird to see Tomcal checking the community list and lookin posting to my new thread. Almost feels like I'm a peeping tom crouching under someone's bedroom window. This is starting to creep me out, lol.

[MsGuy]

Hmmm...I don't think it's so many at one time, lookin. Studying the details and timeline, it appears to be a spyder working its way through the site at about 3 profiles per minute. Denser files seem to take it as much as 2 minutes.

Just a guess from a totally uninformed layman.

[lookin]

To my knowledge, we have always had the ability to see what threads people are viewing.

Probably so, and I just never noticed it. No wonder I was the only one getting excited when we set new records for viewers. Had I known they were spyders, I'd have made a beeline to the sandbox and stayed there!

Talk about a world-wide web!

[TotallyOz]

No wonder I was the only one getting excited when we set new records for viewers. Had I known they were spyders, I'd have made a beeline to the sandbox and stayed there!

We have never been trying to set records here. We set out timer to show who is online in last 60 Minutes. Most sites show last 24 hours or even last week. It makes a huge difference. We like to show those here at the moment.

No sandboxes for you lookin! You are far to funny to play there!

[lookin]

Just noticed one of our 'guests' crawling around a two-year-old post on Les Paul's passing.

I am gratified that we host content congenial to even such finely tuned enthusiasms.

(Just checked back and, as MsGuy predicted, our visitor is gone.)

[seattlebottom]

Maybe it's someon from homeland security.