Chris Boggs wrote a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Googlebot called me on my Timpani Live Help. Timpani Live, is the live chat application from LivePerson, the most popular live chat Web based solution on the Web today. The application is generated via a JavaScript snippet of code you place on your pages. Since we know Google won't index JavaScript, we normally do not need to worry about GoogleBot ringing for help. Or do we?
Chris said that he was prompted with a chat prompt from GoogleBot on his Live Person Timpani agent. At first, I thought, that someone changed his user agent to GoogleBot but then he provided more details. He provided the referrer information, which showed the IP source came from Google.
Browser Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) Host address crawl-66-249-64-44.googlebot.com Host IP 66.249.64.44 Country United States City Mountain View Organization GOOGLE World Region California Postal Code 94043 Time Zone America/Los_Angeles ISP GOOGLE Connection Type Unknown
He then provided the code used on his particular site;
<!-- START LivePerson Button code --> <a href='http://server.iad.liveperson.net/hc/74320687/?cmd=file&file=visitorWantsToChat&site=74320687&byhref=1&imageUrl=http://www.g3group.com/assets/images/chat' target='chat74320687' onClick="javascript:window.open('http://server.iad.liveperson.net/hc/74320687/?cmd=file&file=visitorWantsToChat&site=74320687&imageUrl=http://www.g3group.com/assets/ images/chat&referrer='+escape(document.location), 'chat74320687 ','width=472,height=320');return false;" >< img src='http://server.iad.liveperson.net/hc/74320687/?cmd=repstate&site=74320687&&ver=1&imageUrl=http://www.g3group.com/assets/images/chat' alt="chat with us" name='hcIcon' width=125 height=60 border=0></a> <!-- END LivePerson Button code -->
I have heard rumors of such GoogleBot activity in the past.
Is GoogleBot becoming more human like? Can we be getting to the stage of the invisible spider? This post is kind of related to the Current Issues With Cloaking Using IP Delivery Technology.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
