Flickr Counts Hits from Robots?

This is sort of a placeholder post while I do some research on the matter.  I was looking into why it was that whenever I post something to Flickr and then Tweet about it, there are almost INSTANTLY 7 views of the photo.

I assumed that maybe some people have itchy trigger fingers on Twitter, but it’s too consistent.  So, before sharing on Facebook or anything, I posted one post to my ScientologyParent blog, and then stuck a link on it from Twitter.  Immediately, I saw the following:

38.113.234.180 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:45:29 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1” 200 55856 “-” “Voyager/1.0″67.195.112.244 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:45:32 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0” 200 55815 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)”216.52.242.14 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:45:45 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1” 200 55856 “-” “LinkedInBot/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla/5.0; Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.1 +http://www.linkedin.com)”74.112.131.175 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:03 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0” 200 55813 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Butterfly/1.0; +http://labs.topsy.com/butterfly/) Gecko/2009032608 Firefox/3.0.8″184.72.46.156 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:09 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0” 200 55815 “-” “RockMelt”74.112.131.176 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:11 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.0” 200 55813 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Butterfly/1.0; +http://labs.topsy.com/butterfly/) Gecko/2009032608 Firefox/3.0.8″174.37.205.92 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:43 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/ HTTP/1.1” 200 55854 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19″174.37.205.92 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:44 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/feed/ HTTP/1.1” 200 1388 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19″174.37.205.92 – – [12/Apr/2011:12:46:45 -0500] “GET /toddlers-want-to-help/feed/ HTTP/1.1” 200 1388 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.19; aggregator:Spinn3r (Spinn3r 3.1); http://spinn3r.com/robot) Gecko/2010040121 Firefox/3.0.19”

That’s 7 different bots that hit the page immediately:

• Voyager
• Yahoo! Slurp
• LinkedInBot
• Butterfly
• Rockmelt
• Butterfly (again)
• Spinn3r

Looks like Flickr is counting these pulls as valid views, but not sure yet, as in that same period of time, I only saw two valid browser requests.  Like I said – putting the results here so I don’t forget about it.