Super Mario Bros. X Forums

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!

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

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.