{"id":19027334,"date":"2026-09-23T12:59:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/topic\/http-head-not-human\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T12:59:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T12:59:39","slug":"http-head-not-human","status":"publish","type":"topic","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/topic\/http-head-not-human\/","title":{"rendered":"HTTP HEAD &#8211; Not human!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BotObservatory is recording requests from <strong>192.0.84.117<\/strong> as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Human \u2192 Direct \u2192 Home<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I investigated the same IP in Cloudflare. Over the last 24 hours Cloudflare recorded <strong>285 requests<\/strong>, all to <code>\/<\/code>, and importantly <strong>all 285 use the HTTP HEAD method<\/strong> rather than GET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">285 requests per day is almost exactly the number expected from a five-minute automated health\/availability check (maximum 288\/day), so these don&#8217;t appear to represent human visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Would it make sense for BotObservatory to exclude HEAD requests from the Human category, or perhaps classify them separately as System\/Monitoring traffic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m happy to provide further logs or Cloudflare information if that would help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regards,<br \/>John<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-19027334","topic","type-topic","status-publish","hentry","topic-tag-cloudflare","topic-tag-human"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/19027334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/topic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic\/19027334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19027334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}