Add-Ons to Track Guests

[Steve Freides]

I'm considering this:

Resource icon R

Guest management - Log visits - Thread view limit

Dec 22, 2025

It logs all guests visits at your forum and it limits their thread views.

• Rene_V
• Add-ons [2.x]

as a way of better understanding Guest users. My forum this morning at 0745 EST had 11 members and over 1300 Guests. The add-on says it can sort bots from Guests by whether or not they're using cookies, and also limit daily thread numbers for Guests as a way of encouraging Guests to register. (Our forum is free to join.) I'll note that we already have a limited amount of content that can only be seen by registered users but that doesn't seem to do much.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

-S-

 

[bzcomputers]

Limiting guests typically has the opposite affect. If you limit guests you just get fewer guests and fewer registered users.

You also need to be careful to make sure any add-on you use does not also limit search engines from seeing all your content or you are going to be hurting yourself there also.

I've found valid guests and members typically visit the same content proportionately the same so as long as you're using Google Analytics you can just use their numbers and be done with it. No sense in wasting time and effort. If you really want separate guest numbers just add something like this:

<script>
    gtag('set', 'user_properties', {
        'user_type': '{{ $xf.visitor.user_id ? "member" : "guest" }}'
    });
</script>

to the google_analytics template. Then you can view separate numbers in GA if you really want them.

 

[smallwheels]

11 members and over 1300 Guests

At this ratio it is a pretty safe assumption that 90% of your guests are in fact scraping bots.

Then you can view separate numbers in GA if you really want them.

The vast majority of the current scraping bots that come via resident proxies won't show up in GA as they do not serve the GA snippet.

You also need to be careful to make sure any add-on you use does not also limit search engines from seeing all your content or you are going to be hurting yourself there also.

True on the one hand, on the other currently you can basically only limit excessive scraping effectively if you block or limit guest view. One could compose an add on that would defined search engines through and identifies those by their User Agent and (!) the IP they are coming from - however, I don't know of such an add on.

 

[Steve Freides]

At this ratio it is a pretty safe assumption that 90% of your guests are in fact scraping bots.

Is this a well-documented thing and does it happen across all sizes of forums and all kinds of content?

Thanks.

-S-

 

[andybond]

There appears to be a large increase in bots scraping at the minute

 

[chillibear]

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 183
• Forum: Forum management

• 

Is probably the most active thread discussing all the fun and games of AI scraper bots and what can and can't be done to mitigate things (if you need or want to).