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Why so many anonymous / guests?

robsryder

Motorcycleton
I am curious as to why this website seems to have so many more "guests" or anonymous users than registered members. For example, at this time as seen from the Main Forum page there are 496 guests and 91 members shown - a 5 to 1 ratio. That seems a bit much for something that is a member benefit (this website).

It seems easy enough for MOA members to register and login. The resources used for recruitment of new non-members (i.e., guests) should be separate from the members' website / area. Am I misinterpreting the guest / member data?

I also see that we have a number of "spiders" from the various search firms (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.). Why are these entities permitted to be present and what advantage to they offer the MOA?
 
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Part of the guest number (maybe a huge part?) is people like me...I often read the forums without logging on. If I see an interesting thread or an ad or whatever I log on. If I don't need to I'm just lazy and don't bother.
Your question about Spiders is interesting. I too have wondered about that.
 
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Incsy winscy spider

Spiders collect and catalog the data for seach engines. If data is deposited at this locations a spider will take note of that information. Lets say it is a GOOGLE spider. After awhile GOOGLE will "find" that information for you when you query GOOGLE.

However if the spiders did not come and collect new data then search engines could not display the information.

About all the "guests" - I'm not sure. The guests do not have access to all information and they cannot post.

Other folks more up to speed can add to the explanation.
 
Spiders are good

As noted above spiders are how search engines know the content of a site. Ok, so what good does that do for me as a member?

I use the Google search engine to search sites, it usually does better that the built in find/search function. For instance, to search this site place the following in your Google search parameters:
site:www.bmwmoa.org
and Google will do a full blown search of everything here. Try the following as a Google search and see if you don't like the results better than using the built in search function.
tires BT-45 site:www.bmwmoa.org
 
As noted above spiders are how search engines know the content of a site. Ok, so what good does that do for me as a member?

I use the Google search engine to search sites, it usually does better that the built in find/search function. For instance, to search this site place the following in your Google search parameters:
site:www.bmwmoa.org
and Google will do a full blown search of everything here. Try the following as a Google search and see if you don't like the results better than using the built in search function.
tires BT-45 site:www.bmwmoa.org

I use google to search websites like this - the search function provided by vBulletin is not all that good.

Steve
05 R1150RT
86 R65 - since new
78 DT250
 
I think the important thing to note is that it reports in the last 24 hours. It is not unbelievable to me that 2300+ folks visit the site and aren't logged in.

As for the spiders, this forum software supports and recognizes them... a matter of fact, it is currently reporting the following.

Visitors (2284), Yahoo! Slurp Spiders (20), Google Spiders (2), MSNBot Spiders (2), AskJeeves Spiders (1)

If there is an issue, it is normally caused by sessions on the server or software being set very low. This could trick the software into believing that a person browsing for 10 to 15 minutes is actually several folks. Again, I doubt this is the case.
 
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