Is a "spider" the same as a "bot"?

[LanceGary]

Forgive my ignorance. At the bottom of this page a list of "who is online" is offered. That list includes several "spiders".

Now apart from the John Wyndham novel ("web") about intelligent spiders I don't know of any who regularly visit web sites. Are these creatures the same as "bots"? if not, what's the difference?

Lance

[ErosOlmi]

Different names, similar behaves.

[LanceGary]

Different names, similar behaves.



Thanks! Lance

[kryton9]

A bot can also be something else. It can be a hidden program laying dormant in your computer and it can be awoken by the bot's owner to use your computer to do their bidding. This could be emailing spam or for crunching numbers, basically whatever task they would need many computers doing it.

Also a bot can automate tasks, this would be the last way some might use or think of it. Usually you could call it a macro, script or batch file.