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Ridiculous number of guests

Started by ChiJones, October 26, 2017, 06:04:20 PM

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ChiJones

I've searched and cannot seem to find an answer to this. Our forum only has probably 20-30 users total, yet the numbers of guests is climbing past 70. Robots.txt is on the server. Is there any way to stop this?

edit to add I have also changed the setting to require being logged in to read the forum, but the number just keeps increasing.

Thanks

ChiJones

Now it is over 90. Any ideas?

Thanks

Illori

as long as your forum is on the internet you will get guests and search engine spiders trying to get in. there is nothing you can really do to stop it. not all search engine spiders will listen to your robots.txt file. and it should be a lower case r in robots.txt.

ChiJones

I understand that, but it went from being relatively normal for years to this. I was just curious what might have sparked it and if there was anything I could do to cut down the number.

It's an awfully high number all of a sudden.

Thanks

Dzonny

Well, if content from your forum is listed in search engines - something that you have on your forum may be interesting for wide audience which is well positioned on search engines, and visits may come from that. Also maybe someone posted a link to your forum somewhere and that is causing additional guests.
You may find out from where your visitors are coming from google analytics or some similar service, if you're using it though.

shawnb61

This happened to my forum once.  Unexplained.   My best guess is that some robot glitched.

Problem was that everyone remembered the old high water mark, as it marked some key announcements.   I actually restored the count & date back to the real value.


Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

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