Should We Be Concerned?

[SnailerD]

I was online, surfing the forum in the early am hours (MST). Around 4 a.m. I noticed some grey colored names on the "members on site" counter at the bottom of the page. They were names to the effect of Googlead something or other and the words [bot] listed behind the grey colored name. Later, there was just one and it was something like Googlebot [bot] listed. So, are those something that are supposed to be on the site - checking things out, or are they something to do with spammers and that kind of thing. I think of "bots" as something bad. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Are they okay, or is it something Stijn needs to address? Thank you.

[SnailerD]

A little bit later, it was back again. Here is what it says. I copied it: Registered users: Gigabot [Bot], Google [Bot], SnailerD Yahoo [bot]

The bot names were in grey print and look different than my name (SnailerD). Are those something that are supposed to be there? Or are they something bad?

[Lupin]

They're not bad. They're "spiders" that trawl around sites and pull them on search results.

[pbgroupie]

They are safe. Before they used to show up as guests, now they actually show up as who they are, search engine "bots" that look for key words for search links, like Lupin said.

[SnailerD]

Okay, that's good, because they're back again. If they were something adverse, it would have spooked me off the site.