The Australian Weather Forum

Something that I have been meaning to ask for a while...............................
When I log onto the forum and look at the bottom of the page to see who else is online, often there are a few Bots (listed as Google [Bot], Yahoo [Bot], etc).
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but can someone please explain what these are?
Cheers

Hi Tornado, not a silly question at all!

basically the google bots are automated 'users' that trawl the web constantly delving into the depths of authorised webpages. the reason for this is that they build an image of the web at any one point in time.

The information is then used for page rankings and searches - so if you were to do a search on google for (for example) "Strong cold front. September 8th-10th 2010", our latest breaking weather event, it will show up the AWF on the search.

You may have noticed on google searches as well, a bit that says 'cached'. This is the same thing - when the Bot goes through a site, it stores that info for backward reference - try clicking on it to see what happens. This can be useful if a website is taken down, you can still see older information.

Hope this helps

Chris

Ahhh, thanks Chris, I've also wondered too! Not a silly question at all, Tornado

Thanks mate,
Makes sense. I can now stop wondering!