Is Spyder Spanker a must plugin?

Anyone want to chime in on whether or not you should use the plug in Spyder Spanker?

I hear you should not because it screams PBN?

Blocking backlink spider should not be counted as footprint. But you can mix it up a little to avoid detection.

What do you mean exactly by mixing it up? So you would use the plug in?

Using Spyder Spanker on every single PBN site probably doesn't constitute much of a footprint, if any. But, to ensure the safety of yout network, you can install the plugin on some of your PBN sites and manually block spiders on the rest by editing your .htaccess and robots.txt files.

Why do you all use spyder spanker when it is enough to modify htacceess to block all spyders? This is free and certainly less of a footprint.

Let's be clear on what a footprint is first...I would define a footprint as a common characteristic that is shared between two or more PBN sites. In order for a footprint to exist it has to be detectable, most outward facing Wordpress Plugins impact the HTML of a webpage whereas Spyder Spanker does not (just right click your site and go to 'view source' to see this).

You could argue that blocking bots is a footprint, however your .htaccess file its self which is responsible for this, is invisible to the public and instead functions simply as a set of rules for your web-server to follow when it's deciding to accept or deny get, head or post requests. Google can't detect blocked bots, even if it was impersonating that bot (extremely unlikely) it would simply receive a host not found response from your web-server.

tl;dr Spyder Spanker and bot blocking is not a footprint. Personally, I choose to always block bots but only via the .htaccess file which seems to do the trick...the following code should be fine:

SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*rogerbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*exabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*mj12bot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*dotbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*gigabot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*ahrefsbot.* bad_bot
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent .*sitebot.* bad_bot
<Limit GET POST HEAD>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
</Limit>

For someone like me who has never set up a Wordpress site did my first one yesterday. Actually I am still searching for a good SEO friendly theme because the one I picked has sliders and I read that is not good.

Where do I block bots via the .htaccess file? And is it the code above that is copied and pasted?

Brad12 said:

For someone like me who has never set up a Wordpress site did my first one yesterday. Actually I am still searching for a good SEO friendly theme because the one I picked has sliders and I read that is not good.

Where do I block bots via the .htaccess file? And is it the code above that is copied and pasted?

Click to expand...

There are a number of ways to edit your .htaccess file, the easiest of them is to type "htaccess" into your wordpress plugin search bar. Install a plugin and copy and paste the above either before or after the existing code in there. Be careful not to make other changes or you'll lock yourself out of your own site...been there, done it.

FYI sliders are fine.

Personally, I use .htaccess, I see no reason to install an extra plugin. Also, what if your PBN sites are not on WP?