Google Starts Indexing Facebook Comments 167
First time accepted submitter SharkLaser writes "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy as it was harder for Google to index comments made on the platform. Google, which also runs the competing service Google+, has now started indexing Facebook's public comments as well as comments made on platforms Disqus and Intense Debate, which all used programming that was hard for Google to read. Public comments and links made on those platforms will now be directly visible and searchable in Google."
Dilute the results (Score:5, Funny)
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Does Google index Slashdot comments?
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Turn off Javascript and you (and google) will see only the highly moderated ones in full, with others abbreviated or hidden.
A sensible approach.
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Turn off Javascript and you (and google) will see only the highly moderated ones in full, with others abbreviated or hidden.
A sensible approach.
Only sensible if the comments were moderated in a sensible way...
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Only sensible if the comments were moderated in a sensible way...
If I had mod points, I would mod you down! I always moderate the comments in a sensible way!
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It sure does.
Searching for "Does Google index Slashdot comments?" already gives me this page as the first result.
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22Hey+guys%2C+where+else+can+we+find+more+drivel+to+dilute+our+search+results%22 [lmgtfy.com]
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Yes it did. Right there, 2nd comment from the top of the page. I suggest you use Ctrl-F to find it. Google indexed the comment but it doesn't hold your hand all the way.
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Actually, I didn't and still don't. There was no "post that was in response to", it was the root post in its comment thread.
Unless that was the joke, in which case, no, it wasn't funny.
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Hey guys, where else can we find more drivel to dilute our search results?
homoeopathic.google.com [google.com]
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+2 since they started dropping the "Cached" link. A Wall (or even some chunks of blogs/fora) is impermanent.
Knowing that a desired bit of information (whether it be a LOLcat or a link to a file on some media-sharing site) was posted and indexed by Google three months ago on somebody's wall doesn't give me the abilit
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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There still exists the cached link, albeit in a more discreet, harder to reach location. When you see the preview for a result, you'll see the 'Cached' link in that window.
So, in order to use a feature I find useful, I must first enable a feature I hate? Thanks, Google!
Speaking of features I hate, I see they're pushing out a new look for GMail.
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I wasn't aware you could DISABLE that feature.
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There's an HTML link to it right there. You don't have to enable or disable anything to use it. Middle-click it, or right click and select "Open link in new tab". It's exactly like the "Reply to This" link on Slashdot. Javascript, but with an HTML link for fall-back.
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hahahaha. The irony of +1 to this is great. well done.
In reality, it's a public comment, so there isn't a whole lot to be said there.
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I get what you're saying, but a search engine is supposed to search the web, not a subset of the web.
A search engine is supposed to provide useful results, not fifteen million Facebook comments about the latest funny thing that your cat did.
Google is becoming increasingly useless because they seem to believe that more results are better than a few good results. Even Bling seems to be better than Google for technical queries these days.
Re:Dilute the results (Score:5, Funny)
A search engine is supposed to provide useful results, not fifteen million Facebook comments about the latest funny thing that your cat did.
You seriously underestimate the hilarity of my cat.
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> Even Bling seems to be better than Google for technical queries these days.
Hehe, he said Bling.
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Sounds like an improvement to me.
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While we're on the subject, anybody have a problem with Bing/Bling's color choice for SERPs?
The Google green is nice. Bing green seems kind of dirty. The choice of blue for links also seems odd, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Sort of like Uncanny Valley.
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I get what you're saying, but a search engine is supposed to search the web, not a subset of the web.
A USEFUL search engine presents a subset of the web as a result - said subset determined by your search criteria. Otherwise you might as well crawl it yourself. Nothing is stopping you.
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So you're claim is that no Facebook post ever made has any relevance to any possible search query? What if my search query is "John Smith Facebook posts"? As I said, hopefully page rank will deal with this data accordingly. If it doesn't I'll be as pissed as anyone. But I fail to see how anyone could be opposed to the indexing (except for morons who thought their public Facebook posts where somehow private because they think Google is the web).
Re:Dilute the results (Score:5, Interesting)
Google has a separate search page for images; why not a separate one for social sites? I do agree that I might want Facebook comments in my search, but most of the time I certainly do not.
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+1 to this "Social sites" search tab idea.
Re:Dilute the results (Score:5, Informative)
With Google, you should be able to eliminate the Facebook posts by adding -facebook to your search query. This is likely what the parent post was referring to as Google allows you to eliminate terms from your search. Here is Google's page on commands to better control your search queries [google.com].
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Sorry to reply to my own post but, I found another page with even more search commands on it. It even includes a command to search for cached pages [searchcommands.com] for those that complained that the feature was missing unless you use the preview option.
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Funny Summary! (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget TFA, I stopped reading the summary after "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy..."
The Slaves of Corporate Big Brother have also enjoyed extra silent company.
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Forget TFA, I stopped reading the summary after "Users of Facebook Connect have previously enjoyed extra privacy..."
As far as Facebook is concerned, ALL privacy is "extra", meaning unnecessary.
Google does evil? (Score:1)
Google just tanked a few hundred thousand people's job applications. Corporations will be the only ones thanking them for this feature. Now since they've become a massive bank of information that knows no limits, I suppose this is only fair...
#occupygoogle
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Re:Google does evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Posting a comment publicly means you have no problem with who sees it or how it's used. "Available to all" is the definition of "public". This is like shouting on a street corner and getting mad at someone listening!
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This is more like having a discussion in a coffee shop and having 1000 random people write it down everything you said.
Re:Google does evil? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is more like having a discussion in a coffee shop and having 1000 random people write it down everything you said.
This failed analogy underscores that people do not understand privacy and demonstrates why Facebook thrives.
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I'm honestly sick of analogies like this. Google isn't writing it down. You wrote it down, and a Google-bot walked by, noticed it, and made a mental note of where to find it later, in case anyone asked.
Google is less of a shady private investigator and more of a shady information broker--only instead of hanging out in a creepy back alley and only dealing with scumbags, they hang out front and center in the middle of town and make it much easier for pretty much everyone to lead their lives.
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Agreed, a car with a breathalyzer analogy would have been more appropriate.
- somehow.
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Maybe it's more like having a casual conversation with a friend at a bar which is heard by someone miles away and years in the future.
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If you have your casual conversation over unencrypted, megawatt-boosted ham radios.
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Well yeah, if you record that conversation, and knowingly sprinkling the tapes all across the world for, *literally* anyone to access, forever.
You don't have to post *publicly*...if you do post *publicly* then know that what you post is *public*.
Seriously man?
That's ridiculous (Score:2)
The whole thing about Facebook, or Slashdot, is that they are evocative of a community... and having another site like Google or anyone else barge in and harvest what is something akin to a chat, and save it for ten thousand years, is bullshit.
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For one, I can post AC if I want then I don't have to worry about anyone knowing that I think Texas should be given back to Mexico or any other ridiculous troll drivel that I feel like spewing at any minute. You don't have that luxury on FB unless you have troll accounts.
Another huge difference is the use of pseudonyms on
Re:Google does evil? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
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Yes. Like religious and political leanings, your position on right to work, and worker's rights - anyone who reveals things an employer might not agree with deserves to get fired and never ever work again.
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This becoming more and more of a problem for the traditional social views of those who still believe some activities are sinful and harmful to society, but which are now politically correct to such an extent that being known to have such views, even without expressing them in the workplace, can be grounds for sanctions. I have stopped using FB for sharing deep beliefs with others who think similarly because of this - I have no idea where the postings will show up. Yes, this is a persecution complex that
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That's just downright evil.
If only they had done that and fired you over facebook you'd then have grounds for wrongful dismissal!
Hang on, so If i told my beloved over dinner how much i hated my job would that be disparaging the workplace?
If I at home came up with a new CV and asked a friend to pass it on to his boss at his work would that be insubordination?
Do people really think like that?
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Yeah how dare anyone do anything or have views on issues contrary to what the corporate overlords approves of. That's downright treasonous and more than worthy of you getting a lifetime blacklist.
Or, you know, these employers could just get their noses out of people's affairs that have nothing to do with their job?
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If you're posting publically about things that future employers might feel would make you unsuitable for a position in their company, then you deserve anything you get.
Problem is, what is to determine the tastes of future employers for public speech. Say, for example, I post negative things about a proprietary technology that then becomes ubiquitous (ie, skype, twitter, twilio, etc). What about political speech?
Sure you can post anonymously or pseudonymously, but speech/text can easily be analyzed for patterns to match against a known good source.
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Historically, Facebook hasn't had any problem deciding that was once private is now public. Lots of people have posted stuff that was private, but is now public.
On top of that, Facebook hasn't exactly tried very hard to make their privacy settings understandable or accessible. I'm sure lots of normal people (ie those not reading Slashdot) would be surprised just how public their lives are.
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If it is on the PUBLIC internet, then it is PUBLIC, regardless of what you or anyone else says.
If you remember this, then there is no problem with privacy as you understand that the INTERNET is not PRIVATE ... ever.
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Do you think that it is always obvious what information will hurt your chances of employment? You are probably thinking of photo albums of binge drinking and nudity, but what about views on social policy that the employer may not agree with? What about one poorly thought-out post, rethought and deleted a couple of days later, but cached forever? What about having a hobby that the employer views as frivolous? Not all information is parsed in an objective manner, even when people are trying to arrive at a
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Zuckerberg's idea of "single personality" makes it hard to separate professional and personal attitude.
I was upset at first, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Privacy? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe there should be a seperate security option to allow Facebook users to decide whether they want their comments indexed or not.
Personally I don't have an issue with it. A lot of people post some pretty interesting viewpoints to Facebook, treating it almost like a blog.
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attacking a person for WANTING privacy is a low blow.
you should feel ashamed.
there is NEVER a reason to justify wanting privacy or wanting the conversation that was intended for audience A to be expanded simply due to it being technically possible.
a lot of things are technically possible but that surely does not suffice in making them Good Ideas(tm).
never ask someone to defend why they want their privacy. please see this.
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I'd certainly be upset if somebody decided to make every conversation I've ever had in public places available to anybody who types in my name.
dom
Including a public place where you knew you were being recorded and published?
Seriously, getting mad at Facebook because your public posts are public is like getting mad at the pool because you got wet swimming.
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It is all coming up roses. (Score:2)
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Or, you don't understand the definition of "public". One of the two. Probably the later.
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For the record the reason I left was their constant messages telling me I have pending notifications. I did not. Every time I did log in they kept asking for my email credentials. Like hell they are ever getting those.
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So, let me get this straight... (Score:2)
It sounds like Facebook, Disqus, etc., used to use "programming" that made it hard for Google to index them. Apparently, that has changed. So... is this a change by Google or by the comment platforms? It sounds like it's the comment platform that changed, not Google.
Why blame Google, again?
For that matter... if you post something publically (public comments, not private/friends-only)... why should you expect that it won't be indexed?
I'm just not seeing the reason for rage here.
Re:So, let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
The "programming" mentioned in the Telegraph is that these comment service providers base their systems on JavaScript, which didn't used to be executed by Googlebot for comments.
Now it will.
People have privacy fears because these commenting systems use one login for the entire Web vs. having one for /., one for nytimes.com, one for example.com. Used to be you could be nutty on Slashdot, serious on nytimes.com, etc., without anybody being the wiser. The more websites move to Facebook comments, the more problems of this sort. Combine that with "real name" policies, and it's a privacy mess. More about it here [digitivity.org]
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And this is why I don't comment in places where they are using the Facebook commenting system.
For example, 9Gag. I'd be damned before I put my real name to a 9Gag comment.
I'm always amazed that some people there are willingly attaching their real names to comments on the NSFW posts.
Google indexes some public content (Score:5, Insightful)
Google starts to index an additional source of publicly available content.
or in other words,
nothing at all has happened.
This should be tagged !story.
It's their job. (Score:2)
Google's job is to analyze the content of a web page to make it as relevant as possible to people searching for that information. The fact that the public facebook comments are rendered in javascript shouldn't mean anything to that mission. If there is information publicly available and that information is relevant to someone search, Google aims to lead the searcher to the information.
No one ever said that a search engine should merely parse html. That's how it started, because that's the easiest way to get
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From a general nerd perspective, JavaScript==bad.
It's the same sort of thing that nerds feel about Flash (Flash==bad).
HTML==open==good.
I'm not giving a argument for that feeling here, merely noting it.
Here's a list of other Slashdot prejudices:
Java bad
Oracle bad
Google good
Apple good(?)
Android good (depending on your perspective)
C good
C++ bad
Unity/Gnome3 bad
M$ bad
WIndows bad/Linux good
JavaScript bad (unnecessary use of)
Flash bad
Facebook bad
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From a general nerd perspective, JavaScript==bad.
It's the same sort of thing that nerds feel about Flash (Flash==bad).
HTML==open==good.
I'm not giving a argument for that feeling here, merely noting it.
Here's a list of other Slashdot prejudices: Java bad Oracle bad Google good Apple good(?) Android good (depending on your perspective) C good C++ bad Unity/Gnome3 bad M$ bad WIndows bad/Linux good JavaScript bad (unnecessary use of) Flash bad Facebook bad
For Facebook replace bad with Evil and for M$ replace bad with Devil, and you've summed-up perfectly...
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Java bad? I've not really gotten that impression, at least as a language. Post-Oracle takeover... I guess you have a point.
Also: Python good, Ruby good, HTML5 good, IE Bad (even though, I must say it's improved a lot, just too little too late), Sony bad.
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Java bad: That's not my personal opinion. I actually like Java. But there's a strong anti-Java contingent on Slashdot. They're basically continuing the hatred from the bad old days of Java applets.
Not that recent security problems have helped any.
Filtering (Score:2)
As long as this drivel isn't included in my search results by default, I don't really mind it at all.
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As long as this drivel isn't included in my search results by default, I don't really mind it at all.
Google Blocked Sites [google.com]
You can always just block results from the Facebook.com domain from appearing in your results. I'm not sure I buy the idea that comments on Facebook are somehow different than the billions of comments Google already indexes from other sites, in a way that would "pollute" your search results.
Private vs. Public - some missing the point (Score:1)
This effectively makes semi-private posts (those set to viewable by friends only (or certain groups)) to completely public. That is the breach.
There should be a reasonable expectation that those are not indexed and given to people they were not meant for.
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If you friend Googlebot on Facebook then your private to friends posts will be indexed by Google.
If you don't friend Googlebot on Facebook then your private to friends posts stay private to your friends.
How this concept eluded you we will never know.
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Nothing new here (Score:1)
From TFA:
Previously, search engines were unable to read comments because Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate used programming that was not easy to read automatically.
The comments appear as human-readable HTML.
If a person can read the comments, a search engine can also easily read & index them.
TFA provides no sources or references to support their claim that this comment-indexing is something new.
Google's servers have been indexing Facebook comments from the beginning of Facebook. Whether those comments played a significant role in the pageranking algorithm is another matter.
Google: Please Copy our Social Network! (Score:4, Funny)
Here's what's funny. Everyone said, "Facebook will crush Google+ by copying its public posting ability!"
Yet, Google was sitting there the whole time going, "Please copy us! Please! Please! Please!"
Ah, I see wahts going on... (Score:5, Insightful)
PageRank no longer works (Score:2)
PageRank worked for almost a decade because it lists results from popular sites before obscure sites.
The internet has changed.
Nowadays, Google is great if you're looking for popular stuff like lolcats, memes, angry blogs, discussion forums full of questions and no answers, or corporate propaganda from the 10,000 websites owned by the 10 largest companies in the world.
But for anything else, you can search for days without finding the good stuff. Google is less useful to me at this point than IRC, because if
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Or just google "collegename wiki" (no quotes) and the city/state is usually in the summary text of the first result. Yeah, I'm lazy.
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And by having your personal webring, you (plural) increase the pagerank of that site, and Google works as designed.
View your posts when search for your name (Score:1)
So this is just for Facebook Connect? Like if you post a comment to an article on a 3rd party site that allows you to post via your Facebook account?
I figured it was search engine usable, after all it is public. But it is good for people to be aware all the same that someone searching your name on Google will be seeing your posted comments very quickly if you used Facebook to post it (depending on your name). Using Facebook Connect to do that does a lot more than just let you post a comment.
Good. Now maybe someone will read my comments. (Score:2)
SEO spam, starting in 3,2,1... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"The update means links featured in comments will also enhance websites' standing.
Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social. Every attempt by a major search engine to use social signals has been heavily spammed. Social spamming is cheaper and easier than creating link farms - the social sites host the spam for free.
Google Places was hit hard starting in October 2010, when Places results were mixed in with web search results. It happened fast - within two months, Google Places was choked with spam, with both phony locations and phony reviews. This was so bad that the mainstream press picked up on it, and Google had to deemphasize "places" results. You don't hear Google talking about "local" as much as they did a year ago.
Citysearch and Yelp are choked with spam reviews. Google +"1"s are for sale for about $0.15 to $0.25 each. [googleplus1supply.com] Facebook fans cost about $0-05 each. [bulkfans.com] Google's "real names" policy was an attempt to crack down on phony accounts, but it didn't work. You can buy phone and email verified Google accounts in bulk. [freelancer.com] There are rogue phone services that help with the fake phone numbers. [attlines.com]
Using social signals for search has reduced search quality and jammed social sites with junk that's only read by search spiders. Facebook (which has to allow Google to do this) just set themselves up for an influx of junk. And Google just reduced their search quality again.
There are useful social signals for search, but they come from systems that see transactions and actually know who bought something, like Amazon, eBay, and Visa International. Even those can be spammed; you can buy an old eBay account, change the name, and inherit the old reputation. [ebay.com]
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The problem is not that you use your real info on FaceBook. That was the intent of the customers. It was a way to walk easily with friends, family and other relationships. Have an account for that sort of thing and have one for a public face. You just need to remember that you are being watched online now. Gone is the anonymous for the average user. It was always a false sense of security.
The problem is that we had grown use to an anonymous community. The digital era is being driven back to small rur
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Similarly, anybody who searches on my real name is going to find out an awful lot about a TV presenter who's from a different English-speaking country than I am.
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Does Facebook have any recourse if Google explicitly ignores the robots.txt for their site as well as the site scraping TOS, http://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos_terms.php [facebook.com]?
Yes. Facebook suspended Google's account.
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Yes, they make it public that google is doing it.
Yeah, thats their recourse. It should be enough to stop google from doing it. If they still dont stop, facebook can start throttling request per IP, block all known google address spaces, etc.
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Yes. Same as any other site that is being scraped by a bot that isn't respecting robots.txt.
Detect its user agent and feed it error pages (or even fake data).
If the bot starts spoofing a different user agent, detect its IP address.
And if the bot is operating off a botnet and IP detection fails, you'll have to use heuristic-style methods if you want to detect it. You might just plain be SOL.
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