Title: HTTP HEAD – Not human!
Last modified: September 23, 2026

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# HTTP HEAD – Not human!

 *  [devonsmarty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devonsmarty/)
 * (@devonsmarty)
 * [1 week, 1 day ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-head-not-human/)
 * > Hi,
   > I’ve been using BotObservatory to investigate unusually high visitor figures
   > on my WordPress site and have found what looks like a classification issue 
   > that may be of interest.
   > BotObservatory is recording requests from **192.0.84.117** as:
   > **Human → Direct → Home**
   > The requests occur almost exactly every five minutes. For example, BotObservatory
   > records them at 09:02, 09:07, 09:12, 09:17, 09:22 and so on.
   > I investigated the same IP in Cloudflare. Over the last 24 hours Cloudflare
   > recorded **285 requests**, all to `/`, and importantly **all 285 use the HTTP
   > HEAD method** rather than GET.
   > 285 requests per day is almost exactly the number expected from a five-minute
   > automated health/availability check (maximum 288/day), so these don’t appear
   > to represent human visits.
   > At present, however, BotObservatory includes them in its Human statistics. 
   > On a relatively low-traffic community website this has quite a significant 
   > effect on the figures.
   > Would it make sense for BotObservatory to exclude HEAD requests from the Human
   > category, or perhaps classify them separately as System/Monitoring traffic?
   > I’m happy to provide further logs or Cloudflare information if that would help.
   > Regards,
   > John

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## Tags

 * [cloudflare](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cloudflare/)
 * [human](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/human/)

 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [devonsmarty](https://wordpress.org/support/users/devonsmarty/)
 * Last activity: [1 week, 1 day ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/http-head-not-human/)
 * Status: not resolved