Who even are the Bots?

[Ecruteak]

Sometimes, I look at the online users and find some real people, guests, invisible people and... Bots?
There's also things like Spiders!
Who are these? Why can't I click on their names? And why do they count as online users?

This question's been burning inside me since I signed up back in March. And now I've let myself loose and asked.

Thanks in advance!

[XerX]

They are search engine bots that 'crawl' the forum to grab information for the search engines.

[Julia Pseudo]

They do exist as quasi-user accounts in the forum software, which is why they appear on the online users list. They don't have the ability to do anything but look around the forums, though.