Reduce visits from Googlebot

[blueprairie]

Hello! I'm using Serenity Child Theme on a site http://www.vanmeteria.gov. The host notified me today that it is using too much of the shared server's resources and that the the overload is coming from googlebot crawler. Do you have any suggestions on what I can change to reduce this overload?

Thank you!
- Kimberly

[Perrorist]

I doubt it's Googlebot, but it does sound like a spambot. They're prolific at the moment. I had a spambot attack on one of my sites a week or two ago. It's not just resources that get consumed but your site's access is adversely affected too.

If you have access to cPanel on your host, first check your resource usage (CPU, RAM, virtual memory) under Statistics. If these are high, look at the recent activity log (depending on your cPanel version, Visitors in Metrics or Latest Visitors in Logs). If you see a particular tight range of IP addresses (mine were 192.243.55.125-138) during a concentrated time period, make a note of them. I would check with a DNS lookup site to make sure it's not your host or you or local residents. (I don't know how your site is used, but it doesn't seem to have a login page, so you can't check against a member list.)

To block the range, use the IP blocker (IP Address Deny Manager in Security). That will stop the bots from accessing your site completely.

Hope that helps.

[Perrorist]

Did that solution work for you?

[Author]

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