Crawler Alert - Frequently Asked Questions & Answers Page

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Click here to start using Crawler Alert - it's easy, no programming skills required!

See any of the questions below to find out more:

Q: How Much does this service cost me?

A: nothing, it is FREE

Q: What do I need to use the service?

A: For PHP setups: you must have PHP 4.1.0 or later installed.
For ASP setups: MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP v4 or v5 must be installed. No Perl script at the moment, sorry.

Q: Why do I care to know that a search engine crawler scanned my site?

A: When you update information on your web site, the only way the world will know about this new information is if a search engine will crawl your site, fetch the new information and index it. To learn search engine's crawling pattern and schedule you need to know when it crawled your site, this is exactly the type of information the CrawlerAlert service provides.

Q: How do I receive the notification?

A: By email to the email address you provided upon registration.

Q: What Crawlers and Search engines do you support ?

A: Most major ones. We keep expanding the list all the time, but just to name a few : Googlebot by Google and yahoo, teomaagent by Teoma, WISEnutbot by Wisenut, Zyborg by Wisenut, Gulliver by Northernlight, ArchitextSpider by Excite, Scooter by Altavista, Mercator by Altavista, crawler@fast by FAST, FAST-WebCrawler by FAST and Lycos , WebCrawler by WebCrawler,Lycos by Lycos, moget by Goo, webtop by Webtop, Slurp by Inktomi, Robozilla by DMOZ, Ask Jeeves by Ask Jeeves, MSNBOT by MSN (Microsoft), ia_archiver by Alexa, InfoSeek by InfoSeek, Ultraseek by InfoSeek, MantraAgent by LookSmart, VoilaBot by Voila, KIT_Fireball by Fireball, NetScoop by NetScoop and many more ...

Q: Can I get notification just for specific Crawlers?

A: Yes, in the setting screen after you login to your account, simply select the crawlers you want

Q: How do I unsubscribe from this service and stop receiving alert messages?

A: Simply login and disable 'Alerts active' checkbox

Q: I forgot my password? what do I do now?

A: click here for password recovery.

Q: What are the terms and conditions of use?

A: click here for them.

Q: What is the privacy policy?

A: click here for them.

Q: How do I contact you?

A: click here for our feedback page

Q: What is the motivation for developing this service?

A: Well, that is an interesting story, we run a local SEO consulting firm (out of Israel), many of our customers kept begging us with questions on what crawler have visited them lately, when the new content on their site is going to be updated etc. (for the ones here who run a SEO firm, they know how it feels like…)
So we create a Crawler Alert service for them that notifies them by email each time a crawler crawled their site, we were happy since they got the notification directly and also from the fact that they kept realizing the value we provide them by submitting them to different search engines.
And then we decided that it could really be a useful tool for every web site owner or a web design / Search engine optimization (SEO) firm that works with customers, so we opened it for the general public for FREE!
Why free? Since we think that we get so much out of the free tools on the Internet that we should also contribute something back, so this is our small contribution. We encourage you to use this free service for you and your customers and send us any feedback that will improve the service.

Q: How do I link to you?

A: WOW, I love this question! Anyway you like!

Q: How does this service work?

A: Once you register to our service, you get a small file which you place on your web site, you also need to place a link to this file from your main page. Once a crawler crawls your site, it reaches this page, the content of this page is dynamic and being retrieved from our server, so our server checks the crawler signature and compares it to the crawlers you wanted to get notification on. If there is a match, then you get an email notification telling you that a crawler just visited your site.

Q: Why do I need to register and open an account?

A: Since this is the only way we will know what crawlers you want to get notification on and where to send the notification

Q: Why do I need to place a link from my main page to the file you are giving me?

A: When a crawler begins crawling a site it starts from the main index page. The only way for us to know that a crawler visited your web site is if it crawls the page we gave you. The only way this will happen is ONLY when you place a link from your main page to the file.

Q: Does it matter if my site is hosted on a Microsoft windows machine or Unix?

A: not really, as long as the server supports PHP or ASP (most of them do)

Q: Can I place links from multiple pages to the notification file?

A: Yes, but at the moment you will not know which page was visted.

Q: Can I get notification for multiple web sites?

A: Yes, but we recommend you register multiple times under diffrent names for each server

Q: What information is contained in the email notification that is sent to me?

A: Which crawler visited what site and when

Q: How do I check that the service is working for me?

A: click here for the testing, the test is done by simulating crawler visits to your site.

For comments or questions, please see the Feedback Page.
Crawler Alert