Tracking the google bar...

Id like to figure out a way to track how often people that visit my sites have the google bar.

The point of this is the ongoing suspicion that viewing a site w/ the google tool-bar increases the likelyhood that google-bot will subsequently visit your site. This thread talks about it a little:
http://forums.seochat.com/showthrea...66401#post66401

I already track how often the google bot visits, now i just need to know how often the bar does. I will then try to figure out the relationship of that.

So does anyone know of a way to find out if a visitor has a the gooogle bar installed? Im going to write a few sniffer scripts, and see if i can figure this out, but just though i would ask if anyone knew. Because is only in IE for the windows, this shouldnt be too hard (i hope).

If i find anything out, i will write it up, and maybe get a link or two out of it.

Any thoughts?

There is no way I don't think, or at least no easy way. I don't believe the installation of the toolbar modifies the User Agent in any way, which would have been the most effective way.

You can track them if they actually do a search through the toolbar and find your site in the serps though - but that would be a minority I would think!

Yeah, that is what im trying to avoid. I do know about the user-agent not changing. It is going to be a bit of work and research, but resistance is futile...

I think it will be well worth it.

i have seen this:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; YPC 3.0.1; Hotbar 4.4.2.0; yplus 4.1.00b)

and this:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; Alexa Toolbar)

but the google bar seems to run in stealth mode.

:grin:

Ive been getting a few of those ( i dont care for alexa, i consider it spyware), and a few of these:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; FunWebProd

Im thinking the return headers arnt going to show me anything. Im going to test w/ something more evasive like CallerID but I dont think that sees it either.

Like i said before, this wil take a bit of digging. Im pretty sure i could get/make an ActiveX control taht can get something like that, but again i dont know. Im guessing i will have a firm grasp in a few weeks ( I am doing this in my off time, so it will take a while)

When I do figure it out, i may release the code on this board to those interested in helping me collect information. My three work servers get about 18K, 16K and 7K hits a day. But the 18K server is mostly AOL users :S.

I believe this is an IE browser clone (like MyIE2 or something like that).

hmmm, I completly forgot about those...

hopefully this shouldnt make anything more complicated.