What are the Samrush and Ahrefs bots?

[ttulog]

I recognize all the other bots that the forum software sometimes shows me as visiting the forum, but Samrush and Ahrefs are a mystery to me.

[mimzy]

I think both of them have home pages, but I've been too lazy to check.

There are many more bots than listed under "Registered users" and BTW, it's not that the bots themselves registered as FLM users. Those few bots are simply recognized by the forum software, which makes it possible to give them special permissions. For example, one might want to give Googlebot the permission to index the forums even if normal users require registration. Or the other way round -- deny access. Bot identification is based on user agent string, so it can be easily faked, though.

Protip: if you see a forum that is indexed by Google, but requires registration, try to set browser's user agent to "Googlebot"

[ttulog]

Protip: if you see a forum that is indexed by Google, but requires registration, try to set browser's user agent to "Googlebot"

Thx!