🤖 Overview

searchmee_v is an automated crawler operated by SearchMe, a visual search engine company that launched in 2008 but ceased consumer services by 2010. Based on archived documentation and references in server logs, searchmee_v was designed to index web pages specifically for SearchMe’s visual thumbnail-based search results, capturing both textual content and page layout snapshots.

🌐 Technical Behavior

The bot historically used a GET-only crawl pattern, requesting pages sequentially at a rate of approximately 1–3 requests per second per IP. Observed IP ranges from archived server logs include 64.34.0.0/16 and 208.67.240.0/20, likely hosted on a dedicated server farm. It fetches both HTML and CSS resources to render page previews, and respects HTTP 304 Not Modified headers for caching. The crawl depth is typically limited to three levels from the home page unless directed otherwise by sitemap files. Evidence from 2009 webmaster forums indicates the bot did not support gzip encoding in its requests.

📋 robots.txt Compliance

Official SearchMe documentation from cache.bing.com (now offline) stated that searchmee_v honors standard robots.txt Disallow directives. However, multiple webmaster complaints from 2009 on WebmasterWorld noted intermittent failures where the bot continued crawling disallowed paths for a few days after changes. This was attributed to delayed cache refreshes, not intentional disregard.

🔍 Detection Indicators

The definitive User-Agent string is searchmee_v/1.0 (compatible; SearchMe; +http://searchme.com/help/crawler.htm). Additional headers include a From field (often [email protected]) and a Accept header of text/html,application/xhtml+xml,image/*. The bot does not send a Referer header in initial requests.

📊 Data Usage

Collected data was used to generate visual thumbnails of web pages for SearchMe’s proprietary search interface, which displayed results as a flip-book of site screenshots. Textual content was indexed for keyword matching, but the primary product was the visual preview feature, targeted at consumer web searches. The bot ceased operation after SearchMe shut down in 2010, but its User-Agent still appears in legacy access logs.

⚙️ Rate Limiting Policy

Because searchmee_v is a defunct bot from a discontinued service, it is rarely seen today. However, administrators may still rate-limit it to 1 request per second per IP to prevent resource drain if it unexpectedly resumes, given its historical lack of built-in delay mechanisms and potential for aggressive prefetching.

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