Question about bots

[Alpha08]

I am having quite a few bots sign up to my forum, I see them in the approval queue and approve them but set all of their permissions to never so I can save their information. Is this a good or bad idea? And will google take me saving these accounts as a ranking factor?

 

[RaptureForums]

I usually check out every now and then the "visitors" on the forums and have found that some come from certain ISPs and providers. I have been pretty successful in using Cloudflare's rules to block them. I do the blocking by ASN.

Those that I've blocked are coming from Amazon, HighWinds Cloud, China, and a few other places. I think I have about 8 ASN blocks which saw my unregistered "visitor" rate go down from a couple hundred to about 50 which seems to be pretty much real visitors rather than bots, scrapers, and other bad actors trying to find security holes.

I don't think Google cares about the member accounts on your forums. I just try not to let them use my bandwidth and server resources by doing the block on them before they even get in the front door. :idunno

 

[Dragonfruit]

I am having quite a few bots sign up to my forum, I see them in the approval queue and approve them but set all of their permissions to never so I can save their information. Is this a good or bad idea? And will google take me saving these accounts as a ranking factor?

Rejecting doesn’t delete the accounts, would be easier IMO.