Post by redonihunter in IndieDB/ModDB is a bot/crawler farm! Don't public any game/mod!

Viewing post in IndieDB/ModDB is a bot/crawler farm! Don't public any game/mod!

Now there, arguing that views on that site are useless and maybe suspect, if they do not result in downloads and comments, is something different than arguing that you see "patterns" and because of patterns those views are bots.

You do not need to construct a pattern based bot invasion. Because those patterns can be explained by other means. Even if you find games that show similar patterns, that does not prove anything specific. For video games there are seasonal effects. And even for a small platform, a popular game can attract new people to the platform itself and those new people might check out a lot of games at the same time, resulting in a lot of spikes for a lot of games at the same time.

There is two things here, and you do not separate them. One is bots visiting the site. For that you need just cite the relevant information from the site admins talking about that. Or just look at the bot counter they show. I do not know what these bots are for, and why it is 600+. And why the site knows they are bots, but does not block them. The only question here is, if those 600+ bot crawlers are shown in the statistic as views. I do not think so. It is 600+ and the spikes you show are well below 600. Also, it would be very unusual to count a crawler as a visitor.

The other is, that views are not resulting in downloads. The problem is, the first will not prove the second. Unless you can convince people that all the traffic is from bots. The number of views from bots is bound to be an absolute number and not a percentage. There is a countable number of bots, even if you do not know the number. The kind of bot that does illegitimate things and does not identify itself as a bot. Crawlers visiting a site is normal and would not show up as a visitor, unless it is malconfigured or intentional.

The gary mod statistic has a baseline of about 500. The height of the spike is 2500. So how many bots are there? And why is your spike not 2500, but 200? Why do the bots selectively target games and ignore others? Even if those crawlers are shown in the view statistic, maybe this just reflects an increased interest in the topics of a game. Those crawlers do summary snippets and other things. If people are interested in garys mod, more crawlers will try to summarize the pages of garys mod.

So let's talk about "downloads". The statistic you showed does have increase in downloads at those peaks. Up from 0 to a few and for the November spike even rising with the spike. Is there an expected conversion rate for that site? Do people go to this site to actually download a game? When I go to an example indie game like this one, I see a "download" button that does not show files, unless expanded. And it shows a link to Steam and to Itch.

This is my personal preference of course, but that db site is ad-ridden and almost unuseable. It ranks quite low in my own trust, and frankly I do not know that site and do not know how to navigate it. That game in particular has 8 different demo versions to download. There is not even version numbers. Just a dump of downloads to sort through. And I did mention, that the download needs to be expanded, while there is an attractive Steam button below? ;-)

Would I download from there? Nah. I would check the game out on Steam. Or maybe Itch. Also, the game is in early access. While I am not a user of that indiedb site, I probably would not go there to download games that are still in alpha or beta. Also the site has DB in it's name. I do not go to imDB to watch movies, I go there for information about the movie.

So is this free advertisement by having your game on indiedb a waste of time? Crawlers can find it there. And according to your arguments, they do that a lot and inflate your view counter. You are just disappointed because you do not see a direct increase in downloads. What do you think those bots do with the information? Do you think they increase the view counter just for fun? That information goes somewhere, and can result in someone knowing about the game and maybe even checking it out - at whatever place.

It will also appear in search results. This currently gives me these answers: Steam. Itch. SteamDB. Weebly Homepage. Youtube. ModDB. Nekoweb. Reddit. indiedb. Gamespress.

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Ofihombre14 hours ago

For your information, everything I've discussed has never been for a case of bots that are clearly detected as such within the bot counter, but rather for those bots and crawlers that impersonate Mac users and are counted as "guests".

Don't you understand the difference? What I was trying to demonstrate in the patterns between the statistics of my games, Padman and Garry's Mod, are due to the bots from guest counter, not from the bot counter.

I also haven't used Randy & Manilla's statistics for promotion, but rather to use them as an example of why such incidents were happening, although I don't rule out that their big presence in the search results may have influenced it to a great extent.

I can agree that IndieDB isn't the preferred site for downloading games, mainly because of the number of ads; that's why some people opt for ad blockers, as well as being a catalyst for later downloads or purchases on itch.io or Steam, so in that sense I shouldn't care about the visits if people get it from somewhere else. But even on IndieDB people often download and comment there, especially in the past decade (when the site was more frequently used).

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redonihunter12 hours ago

but rather for those bots and crawlers that impersonate Mac users and are counted as "guests"

And you have any proof for that? What's the motivation? Who is gaining from this? Who does this? Why impersonate mac users? Would it not be more clever for bad bots to impersonate the expected user agents representing a general audience?

You just said the site was previously more popular. Maybe it is still popular for mac users for whatever reasons. At least more popular than for windows users, that is. A few hundred users is not a big number to do statistics. A single school or university fitted with computers for the students could dominate such a statistic.

What I was trying to demonstrate in the patterns between the statistics of my games, Padman and Garry's Mod, are due to the bots from guest counter

You build a premise that itself is based on assumptions. What you showed as evidence is not conclusive and the big flaw is: even if there was a correlation between games, you could not prove that it would be because of a bot traffic wave hitting those games.

So am I to believe that this alleged bot wave traffic selectively hit some games with 2000 hits and others with 200 hits and still others not significantly at all? How does your hypothesis explain this mismatch of supposed bot activity?

This is almost as bad as: I see lights in the sky, therefore aliens. You just jump to your conclusion, it must be the ~~aliens~~ bots that are visible there.

I am critizising your chain of logic here. Your observations are not explanations. They are observations. And the only thing you show here is, that the view to download ratio is rather bad on that site. And even that is not true, it seems.

AI are good for that sort of summary. I asked what ratio to expect on indie gaming sites. It gave me these numbers.

1–3% downloads per view — common for an average listing

3–10% — solid performance

10%+ — very strong, usually a highly targeted audience, compelling page, or game-jam/viral traffic

Below 1% — not necessarily bad; often caused by broad exposure, weak store-page messaging, paid games, or visitors who already own the game

And your so called unusal spikes of bot activity fit this ratio. You do have like 1 download per 100 views. Sometimes 4 downloads for 53 views. Then one day 216 views and 3 downloads, next day 162 views and 1 download. And the traffic below 50 often has 0 downloads.

Nothing in the data of that Randy game seems suspicous to me at the moment. You do not have 1000 views and 0 downloads. And if your views pass into the hundreds you do have a proportional download ratio near 1%, which is to be expected.

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Ofihombre11 hours ago

I'm running out of ideas. The more you try to refute my arguments, the more stupid I feel trying to find solid evidence.

This discussion is proving very unproductive and is not leading anywhere. Wouldn't it have been much easier to explain the whole case to the Dbolical administration, and after they gave us their conclusions, they could give us a verdict on which of us is more right?

Regarding your example of 1,000 views and 0 downloads, what happened on Friday the 18th didn't come from just one game, it came from almost all of mine combined.

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