Spider Pageviews come from identified web crawlers like Googlebot, or ScanAlert if you use that (now known as McAfee HackerSafe).  You can actually add your own identifiers using the Analytics Rules.

Suspect Pageviews are typically automated scripts being run against your site in an attempt to find a known bug in common web site software.  This could be from a "zombie" PC infected with a virus, or some bored teenager in a far away land.  They can also be unidentified spiders.  Suspect pageviews are identified by a single IP address starting many new sessions very close together.  This type of activity is highly "suspect".

We seperate these out because if they were included in the normal Pageviews / Session statistics it would make the data meaningless because one Googlebot visit would appear like 100's of unique visitors hitting the site for one page each.

If you determine that a specific IP address is bombarding your site (look at the Visitor Logs and turn on Show Suspect), you can block it via the IP Firewall.

Some other facts for the public:
    - Suspect Sessions are is still logged as a full session so it can increase your database size and footprint.  
    - Spider Views are tracked at a less detailed level saving space and database operations.
    - Full Sessions (normal visitors): every page and detail about their visit is tracked for your reports and research.

AmeriCommerce knows it is a spider by following the Traffic & Analytic rules setup in the admin under global settings.  We give you the ability to override or add to our default rules to classify and more importantly block or redirect traffic that you have researched.   It's a very very powerful module that gives you fine grained control over your visitors.

Be sure to check it out!  It can reduce your bandwidth and give you great new ways to track where people are coming from such as affiliate sites, emails, branded traffic (people who type your name in directly...that way they are not considered 'organic search' traffic), etc etc.   You can even control where they 'go' too.  There are many 'actions' you can perform on each visit.

As for bandwidth, I always like to recommend blocking international spiders if you do not sell internationally, this can reduce bandwidth significantly as some international spiders are not very optimized and can consume a lot of bandwidth on your site. 

Hi Stefan,

 Thanks for the info.  Is there any instructions or additional information on blocking how to block the international spiders you mention?

Wow, thanks for all the great input. Keep it coming.

Thanks.

Yes, the advanced analytics rules used to block certian spiuders was a KEY thing for us. By blocking certain russian spiders and other search engines, we were able to cut our bandwidth bill in half ;)

I typically will take a look at a customers site and see what 'unknown spiders' are hitting it.  I also look and group by user agents (thats where the spiders typical information is at).  All of this is done under the Visitor Analysis report which is REALLY powerful.  Just pick user agent to break the visits out by and it will tell you how many hits they are putting on your site.  

Any known spiders to AmeriCommerce will be in the spiders report so you will be able to see how many times each of them are hitting you.

That's how you identify the culprits.  Next you will want to block them.  Use the Traffic & Analytics Rules under global settings to do this.  I typically block at least these known international spiders if you don't sell much overseas.

Baidu - Japan
Goo - Japan
Jyxo - Czech
Sougou - China
Voila - France
Yandex - Russia
Yanga - Russia
Cuill - US but huge bandwidth hog and not even a live engine

Those are the really big culprits.