While Spambots could be considered an entirely different issue and problem in its own right, with various MODS and mechanisms to combat Spam, I am more interested in the simple fact that normal search engine spiders/robots seem to have always been allowed to "get away" with increasing the topic Views counts. Why
I think that forum owners and topic posters don't like this because they want a fairly accurate representation of the number of views by real people, by excluding the Bots from incrementing the views count altogether.
I understand there is the issue that Views may increase by several clicks simply by the fact the author of the topic might re-view their own topic, particularly if editing it shortly after the initial post.
But once this has settled down it is nice to know roughly how much interest your post has generated.
Even if people (other than the author) reading a topic view it repeatedly, this is normally an indication of genuine interest in that particular topic.
Search engine bots can account for a high number of Views to the post, which portray a false picture of topic interest.
phpBB 3.0.2 already allows identification of Spiders/Bots, and there is even an option within the Groups forum permissions under the Misc tab for Bots to control whether the Bots group may Increment the Post Counter, so why on earth isn't there a similar setting to stop Bots Incrementing the Views Counter ??
This seems to have been a hot topic of discussion and misunderstanding by forum owners for the past 3 or 4 years.
I just don't see why this idea has not been implemented particularly since phpBB is specifically checking for Spiders now (unless I have missed it somewhere?).
I would have thought that a global switch under the Spider/Bots section could turn off incrementing of the Views counters. Or even a switch against each individual Spider/Bot, although I can't really think of a reason why you would want to allow some but not other bots from affecting the Views counts.
I would be interested to know peoples VIEWS or comments on this point!!
