Help!!! Is there a bot located in Grass Valley?

[maraze]

I have started to see regular visits from Grass Valley California US in my StatCounter logs.
I have a few blogs in Turkish. And some of them had daily unique visits around 100. Almost all of them coming from Google search engine. They ranked very high in many keywords. Since I have been using StatCounter since last spring, I can notice all kinds of differences in my blogs traffics. And a few days ago I noticed a big decrease in my traffic. I thought it was a usual trend (maybe because its weekend or something). But the decrease continued and my blog which had daily 170-180 visits for months now gets 30 something. My other sites the same. And checking the keyword from StatCounter, I saw that my search engine rankings has fallen dramatically.
The only difference I can notice is visits from Grass Valley California. Each having near but different IP numbers, and each 0 seconds long. Since these visits have started all my Google SERP's have gone done drastically. My only site that is still like before is the only site that this GRass Valley visitor hasn't entered.
The same thing happened a few months ago. Again this Grass Valley visitor has started from one of my blogs and visited all of them without staying more than 0 seconds anywhere. And after those visits again I had big decreases in my Google search engine positions. But I touched nothing and it eventually recovered in a few weeks. But that was just one visit from Grass Valley visitor. This time its always around. I don't know what to do.
I've researched the web to see if there's a bot or search engine located in Grass Valley, California. Couldn't. Since my sites are in Turkish, I don't think lots of Grass Valley residents are visiting them . But I can't find out what it is. The information is below. There are two kinds of entries. Please I need help. :cry:


1. Location: California, Grass Valley, United States
Hostname: (38.98.19.79)
visit length: 0
number of entries: 1
returning visits: 0
reffering URL: no referring link

2. Location: California, Grass Valley, United States
Hostname: (38.98.19.66)
entry page: www.blogcu.com/entry.php?u=maraze&e_id=436330&opt=watch_entry&track_opt=add_track
exit page: www.blogcu.com/entry.php?u=maraze&e_id=436330&opt=watch_entry&track_opt=add_track

[Arne]

The hostname (IP) is according to Whois (whois.domaintools.com) for a company by the name Performance Systems International Inc.

At their front page (at www.psilimited.com) they say:
PSI is a management consultancy that delivers tailored solutions to international organisations seeking to achieve their strategic goals through effective leadership and management of their human capital worldwide.
Don't know what that mean really, but on some forums it looks like people sharing and downloading music and/or movies are a but scared by them. They belive PSI works for RIAA with tracking down those "pirates" ;)

[maraze]

Don't know what that mean really, but on some forums it looks like people sharing and downloading music and/or movies are a but scared by them. They belive PSI works for RIAA with tracking down those "pirates" ;)

Dear Arne,
thank you very much for your quick reply. But I couldn't understand it.
What does that have to do with my personal blogs?? I have nothing to do with music or movie downloads. I only have 2 downloaded videos from Google or YouTube on 2 of my blogs.
Can it be a bot who is going around looking for stolen material?
I have plenty of content but its all mine. My personal thoughts plus some translations from English. Where could I be getting this bot/visitor? from? How can I get rid of it? I am really worried because I have Adsense ads on my sites and my only source for traffic is natural search.

[Arne]

What does that have to do with my personal blogs?? I have nothing to do with music or movie downloads. I only have 2 downloaded videos from Google or YouTube on 2 of my blogs.
Well, nothing to do with your blog, if those videos are not protected by any RIAA copyrights. Then you have nothing to worry about, and what I said was only what I have seen is comments on a couple of other forums by people who do file sharing. I don't really know if that is correct, but only may be.

Can it be a bot who is going around looking for stolen material?
A kind of a bot, yes you may see it like that. In that case they check any site with music and/or video content to determine if the content is protected. Then go on to next site, so they probably leave your site soon if they have not all ready done so.

How can I get rid of it? I am really worried because I have Adsense ads on my sites and my only source for traffic is natural search.
I don't see any reason to be worried, if your content is not copyrighted by anybody else (protected by e.g. RIAA). They will then probably leave your site when they can't find any sutch material.

I'll guess your blog is on a server that you don't have any access to, in any other meanings than add content directly to the pages from a online template? If so then can't see any way you can block them. If you have access to the server, you could use a .htaccess file to block their IP from accessing the blog pages. In this case you can search the forum for posts about it, e.g. http://forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25152&highlight=.htaccess

[maraze]

If you have access to the server, you could use a .htaccess file to block their IP from accessing the blog pages. In this case you can search the forum for posts about it, e.g. http://forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25152&highlight=.htaccess


I have access to the templates (its like blogger) but the IP no's are constantly changing can I block numbers like everything starting with (38.98.19.x) ?

The x is always different.

[webado]

The .htaccess file can contain an open ended ip like xxx.yyy.xzzz and it will block all addresses with the first 3 octets identical, and a vraible 4th one.

You cannot do anything with templates, those are only for designing web pages. You need to uplaod an .htaccess file (as long as the server is Apache). That controls access to the site. If you cannot do that, there's nothing else really. You could as your hoster to do it from their end.

But I'd not worry about such visits. Rememebr why you haev a website - for it to be visited. Why you have a blog with rss feeds and such: to be better discovered by others.

[maraze]

Arne and Chrisooc thanks for your answers.


But I'd not worry about such visits. Rememebr why you haev a website - for it to be visited. Why you have a blog with rss feeds and such: to be better discovered by others.

Chrisooc, that's the reason I worry about these particular visits. I guess you haven't read my (quite long) first post. Whenever I notice these visits, all my search engine rankings of the blogs it visits fall down dramatically, or get completely lost from search engines which are my only source of traffic. I never thought of restricting anybodies access to my sites. I just believe that these
IP numbers all located in Grass Valley California are not human and they have a bad effect on my rankings because of some reasons I can't understand.
I have began to get 20-30 daily visits to sites which used to have over 150 daily visitors. I have lost all the keywords which I was ranking in Google's first page after these Grass Valley visits began.

[maraze]

Arne and Chrisooc thanks for your help.


But I'd not worry about such visits. Rememebr why you haev a website - for it to be visited. Why you have a blog with rss feeds and such: to be better discovered by others.

Chrisooc, that's the reason I worry about these particular visits. I guess you haven't read my (quite long) first post. Whenever I notice these visits, all my search engine rankings of the blogs it visits fall down dramatically, or get completely lost from search engines which are my only source of traffic. I never thought of restricting anybodies access to my sites. I just believe that these IP numbers which are all located in Grass Valley California are not human and they have a bad effect on my rankings because of some reasons I can't understand.
I have began to get 20-30 daily visits to sites which used to have over 150 daily visitors. I have lost all the keywords which I was ranking in Google's first page after these Grass Valley visits began.

Isn't there anybody who has noticed such visits besides me?

[webado]

No, I did read it and it cannot be related. A coincidence at most.

Oh, maybe the search engines have discounted your site, you'll need to look at other reasons, like maybe there's a technical reason your site may not be well indxed, or it may present a spammy face to the search engine robots and perhaps you are facing a penalty, or duplicate content or something along those lines.

Maybe you want to take a look at his page: http://groups.google.com/group/only-validation/web/website-check-list and see what, if anything, may apply.

The part about site ownership is only in the context of Google Sitemaps, so if you are not participating in that, it doesn't apply. Well, the part about doctype and syntax of meta tags would apply.

[webado]

Also take the look at this: http://www.feedthebot.com/

It's become an amazing resource site.

[maraze]

When I searched Google for -PSI bot- these are some of the results which came. These "IP numbers starting from 38.x.x.x from PSI" is first talked about in the webmasterworld forum in 2003 but no result is found there either.

And then from Spamhuntress blog 2005 and some other blogs recently. But there is no solid information. I put them here because my web technical knowledge is not enough to understand much from these posts. Maybe you can help me.

I found a bot, because it had gone for my trackback file, with a GET request. Same thing the search engine spiders do.

IP number:
38.118.25.61

That’s within the Performance Systems International Inc. IP block, but dns servers are from cogentco
spamhuntress - 2005

Link Crawler On The Roam- Wilmacc.wordpress.com 31.Jan.2007

Most do not want to remove That many users from their site’s access, but to tell the truth, I’ve only seen hackers, spammers, and no good come out of Level 3 home domains. I had no problem s*** canning the whole range of 38.* - none at all, but some might feel different about it.

Cogent, PSINet, and Sproose Keeps On Going and Going- Wilmacc.wordpress.com 4.Jan.2007

38.100.225.26
OrgName: Performance Systems International Inc.
OrgID: PSI
Address: 1015 31st St NW
City: Washington
StateProv: DC
PostalCode: 20007
Country: US
NetRange: 38.0.0.0 - 38.255.255.255
CIDR: 38.0.0.0/8
Agent: sproose/1.0beta (sproose bot; http://www.sproose.com/bot.html; crawler @ sproose.com)
Sproose.com FAQ

What is Sproose?

Sproose is a personalized, interactive search engine, combining the strength of social networking with peer-moderated ranking, with the ability to prioritize, customize and fine-tune searches to produce only the most relevant web search results.

http://willmacc.wordpress.com/2007/01/04/cogent-psi-and-sproose/

[maraze]

Meanwhile, my blogs in which these visits have ended started to rank better now. But its still visiting my other blogs. Maybe every month or two I will have to accept these kinds of dramatical ups and downs as these visits happen. But I am afraid they will never go for good. Because they are at my sites for almost 2 weeks now. The first (and last) time I noticed these visits, they entered from my blog and thru the links there visited all my other sites in a few hours (I guess) and left totally until 2 weeks ago. Now they are everywhere and everyday.

[maraze]

I have started to see regular visits from Grass Valley California US in my StatCounter logs.
I have a few blogs in Turkish. And some of them had daily unique visits around 100. Almost all of them coming from Google search engine. They ranked very high in many keywords. Since I have been using StatCounter since last spring, I can notice all kinds of differences in my blogs traffics. And a few days ago I noticed a big decrease in my traffic. I thought it was a usual trend (maybe because its weekend or something). But the decrease continued and my blog which had daily 170-180 visits for months now gets 30 something. My other sites the same. And checking the keyword from StatCounter, I saw that my search engine rankings has fallen dramatically.
The only difference I can notice is visits from Grass Valley California. Since these visits have started all my Google SERP's have gone down drastically. My only site that is still like before is the only site that this GRass Valley visitor hasn't entered.




I found out that the Snap preview tool is activating these strange PSI bots (located in GRass Valley, Calif., ip no's starting with 38.19.*.*) to track our blogs touring around the web for Snap (or something else cause their customer service at the time had answered my letter explaining they didn't have any relation with Grass Valley) , just like Googlebot does for Google, via link to link.

Although during the searches I've done on the web for anything about this PSI bot, I've found so little information and 1 or 2 people wondering about them in the past, just like me (only the one post of willmac.wordpress blog enlightened me about this Snap-PSI bots relation, and some comments coming to that post),
I have found nothing on the impact it eventually has on SERP's of the blogs visited by this PSI bot.

Now since I finally understood how I activated these bots involuntarily by creating two Wordpress blogs (cause they have this Snap thing built in to Wordpress these days) a few weeks ago, I shut them off but I don't know what to do to fix back my SERP's which I'm almost sure is again related to all this stuff.