All User Agent Categories
Browsers
Browser signatures in User Agent strings, including browser plugins and media players.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Web Browser | Web Browsers are graphical applications that render rich HTML content and process scripts. Well known web browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Opera, Safari. |
| Offline Browser | Offline browsers download locally web pages to be further inspected and navigated in disconnected mode, without online Internet connection. |
| Plugin/Toolbar | Plugins are browser add-ons, components that you installed on your browser, and which may add their own specific signature in browser's User Agent string. They can be browser Toolbars, Search bars or other kinds of applications, that provide additional functionality each time the user visits a web page, downloads some files or performs a search. |
| Filter/Proxy | Filters may block spam or adult content, and protect your privacy. Proxies are gateways used by client computers, to spoof their real IP address and identity. Their requests are re-routed through the proxy server and appear as coming from someone else. Proxies are also used with good intention, to protect client computers from external intrusions and hacker attacks. We also included here any other browser security-related tool or plugin, and anti-virus online crawlers. |
| Blog/Feed | Blog and RSS/Feed services are either crawlers looking for and collecting data from RSS XML pages from your site, or aggregators you subscribed at with your published feed, and which periodically collect latest news from your XML file. Some advanced Feed aggregators will also let you know how many times your RSS data has been inspected by visitors on their external pages. |
| Text Browser | Text mode browsers extract and display only the text content from web pages. |
| Media | Media players, tools, plugins, crawlers scrapping images, video and multimedia files. Web image editors and downloaders. Video game consoles, Web TV. |
Platforms
System-related signatures in User Agent strings, including the operating system running on client's computer, the type of computer, distributor of software or Internet service, the type of mobile device.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Software | In this category we included infrastructure modules installed with the browser or the operating system, which appear in the User Agent string, as well as various software components or open-source code for HTTP, FTP or generic TCP/IP protocol. |
| Mobile | Many hendheld devices, cellphones, Pocket PCs, iPods, wireless ports, leave their specific signature in a User Agent string. |
| Operating System | User Agent string usually contain information about the Operating System installed on client's computer - such as Windows-based, Unix-based, Linux or Mac OS. |
| Provider/Adware | ISPs (Internet Service Providers) or cellphone/mobile device service providers can include a specific signature in a traditional browser User Agent string. In some cases, this is done only for advertising purposes, to let other website owners know about their services. On client's browser, they may also change the title bar information, with a similar intent. Same category includes the type of client's computer, such as Compag or Amiga, when a specific distributor is mentionned. |
Tools
Various webmaster online or standalone tools, that leave a signature in User Agent strings. This includes code validators, bookmark managers, site monitors and Content Management Systems or HTML Editors.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Code Validator | Code Validators are online tools or local applications that validate HTML, CSS, XML, RSS, XSL format of web pages, as well as syntax of hyperlinks or the overall site structure. Based on a set of standard rules, they determine if your pages obbey W3C regulations. Link Validators will make sure your URLs have a correct format. Most Validators will not visit your site, unless you specifically required their service. |
| Bookmark Manager | Bookmark managers are either browser plugins that manage your Favorite links and Fav icons, or Social Network applications for shared online bookmarks. Users store lists of Internet resources, which they find useful. The lists are either private, or become accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or randomly. Their crawlers may spider your site, looking for interesting pages they can bookmark and share with their users. |
| Monitor | Server Monitors or HTTP Site Monitors will visit your website (usually just your home page) at fixed intervals of time - usually every 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes - to determine if your hosting server and site are up, and to measure the response time. Monitors can be online subscription-based services or standalone applications you installed on your computer or local network. It's rare a server monitor will visit your site, unless you subscribed to its service or started the local application. |
| Content Manager | Content Management Systems, Web Editing and Publishing tools, HTML Editors. |
Crawlers
Different types of crawlers, search engine robots, spiders, e-mail harvesters/collectors, link checkers/validators, sitemap builders, download managers or other kind of automated bots, that traverse website pages for different purposes.
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Download Manager | Download managers are either standalone applications or browser plugins that transfer locally different elements from the web, such as full HTML pages, images, multimedia etc. |
| E-Mail Collector | E-Mail collectors or harvesters crawl web pages looking for and collecting e-mail addresses. |
| Spider/Bot | Any type of robot that does not fit in other categories from the Crawlers group. This include unknown and undocumented visitors that act like spiders, traversing a large number of pages in a small period of time. |
| Link Checker | Link Checkers traverse hyperlinks and check for broken links or missing pages. Broken links are URLs you have to external unavailable pages in your pages. Missing pages are links you may have to other pages from your own site, which are no longer accessible. Most Link Validators will not visit and crawl your site, unless you specifically requested their services. Link Exchange crawlers make sure reciprocal links are present on the web site. |
| Search Robot | Search Engine crawlers collect text-based content data or multimedia data (pointers to images, videos or audio files) for indexing purposes. Unlike those other spiders you don't know why they collect your data and what they do with it - and which can be found in the generic category of Spiders - search engine crawlers are in most cases good for you, because they help people find your website pages and bring you more visitors. You can also go to their search engine main pages and look for the data from your site that they indexed. |
| Sitemap | Sitemap webmaster tools are either online services, that recursively parse your site to build a sitemap file for search engines, as defined by sitemap.org, or search engine crawlers that read your XML sitemap file to determine which pages you want indexed. Most sitemap online services will act only on your specific request and will crawl your site only when you requested them to build a sitemap file. |