Critique my code: Notify on Googlebot Crawl

[Angus]

Hi all,

Im pretty new to PHP so keen to make sure that I am on the right track and whether or not I could make my code better.

Some of you may also find this useful 🙂

The purpose of the following code is to be used as an include file to send the webmaster (me in this case) an email when Google has been detected crawling the site. Very useful for those who know about SEO.

Anyway - let me know if I could do things better.

<?php

 $string = strpos($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "google");
 if ($string === false)
    exit();
 else
    {
    mail("[e-mail]", "Google is crawling", "Google has crawled phphacks.com");
    }
?>

[raymie]

if you have access to the server log then you do not need to do this since the logs give you more info.

If you have access to the logs but not to a decent package to decode/display them then try awstats, it is free and quite good.

[Angus]

Nah - I worked in SEO in a very hardcore company for quite a while so understand log analysis VERY well.

I just want something that emails me and says - hey google is here rather than me checking logs every day.

I can do the analysis later.

[Angus]

Better version thanks to Hansm

if(eregi("google",$HTTP_USER_AGENT)
 {
 mail("[e-mail]", "Googlebot detected", "Google has crawled phphacks.com");
 }

[Weedpacket]

The first one - if(strpos()!==false){mail();} - is faster and cleaner than hauling out eregi just for a plain string. Unless you're checking for "google", "Google", etc.