Post by redonihunter in Bot/crawler activity detected on IndieDB/ModDB!

Viewing post in Bot/crawler activity detected on IndieDB/ModDB!

You can always delete the thread, if you want. Accusing a site to be a bot farm is not the way to make it improve. It implies that you might think the site owners are responsible for the bot activity. Maybe to cash grab on ad money, so they are acutally scamming the advertisers with inflated views.

Also, I think the aligned graph shows that your premise of patterns is not a foundation to argue.

At most I would agree that the statistics of that site are questionable and not good for marketing analysis. Maybe that angle is more promising for improvements.

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Ofihombre14 hours ago

Well, I don't think deleting the thread is the best option, but I will change the title since the one that says "IndieDB/ModDB is a bot/crawler farm!" was more due to the excitement of the moment after seeing so much traffic inflation for a year (besides updating some things too).

I may not have found enough evidence, but I'm satisfied that you at least acknowledge that the statistics are questionable.

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redonihunter14 hours ago

Of course they are. Most "problematic" imho is the links to Steam (and Itch). Views on that site can mean anything. Or nothing. It is not a primary release channel. It's even in the name (at least for me). A site with db suffix is an information site in my eyes. Not a download site.

If the site tries to be a publishing site, this was not my impression. But I did not spend much time there.

As a recommendation for your r&m site. Ditch the older downloads. That many downloads confuse people. Have a stable and an experimental version if you must. Similar to your Itch page of that game.

And as I said before, you do not need to find extra evidence. You can just use the verbatim statements of the site admins. If they would say something like "we had a spike of suspicious bots mascerading as guest users in early November", you could corraborate that, with "yeah, I even see a spike in some games at that time, which might be that activity, so that problem those admins talk about seems real and it is affecting this and that statistic".

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Ofihombre13 hours ago

As a recommendation for your r&m site. Ditch the older downloads. That many downloads confuse people. Have a stable and an experimental version if you must. Similar to your Itch page of that game.

But that's exactly what you told me two years ago:

After following your recommendation, I only made the beta versions accessible and stated that the older versions would remain accessible on IndieDB:

So I'm not going to delete them from IndieDB by any means, because I've left them here for a specific niche of people who are fond of preservation and want to know the game's past. Besides, I don't even have the authority to delete the files. On IndieDB and ModDB, it has to request it from the administration.

You can't recommend things without first knowing what processes they require.

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redonihunter13 hours ago

rofl

Well. Too much options to chose for downloads are still confusing to me ;-)

Good, that indiedb is not your main landing page.

You can't recommend things without first knowing what processes they require.
Besides, I don't even have the authority to delete the files.

That you do not have control over your indiedb page is indeed a surprising information. Sounds strange.

But if indiedb were your main landing page, I would still point out to you, that this is unattractive for potential visitors, if they have to figure out, which is the correct current demo version of the game. If you only use indiedb as an archive site, the statistics of that site are even more unuseable.

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Ofihombre13 hours ago

There is a significant difference between downloads from IndieDB and those from itch.io:

They have thumbnails & descriptions, this greatly reduces confusion if executed correctly.

Furthermore, they are also updatable, making it unnecessary to delete them and upload them again with the updated build.

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