The Internet Advertising Bureau said it had reached an agreement
with the on-line auditing service ABCi to track all internet
traffic originating from automated robots and spiders, programs
that visit web sites and reads their pages and other information in
order to create entries for a search engine index. This traffic
should not be included in counts claiming to detail the amount of
human visitation to sites, but is often responsible for confusing
data.
“Spider and robot activity is believed to be the largest single
contributor to inaccurate measurement," ABCi President Bruce Smith
explained.
The two groups have agreed to update the list of spiders and
robots every month and make this information available to their
members every month free of charge. It is hoped that this will
increase the transparency of web traffic measurements, a key
indicator used by advertisers when deciding where to place ad
campaigns.
