Is there such thing as link leaving bots?

I have noticed on my phpbb site that some new members only leave a profile link and do not posts. I have noticed that these same people or things hit my affiliate sites because of course I link to them.

Are these bots?

If they are bots, where do I go to get one?
Are they a good thing to have or something that could hinder my site enhancement?

Thank you

Paul

Sounds like bot behaviour.

Not sure how they would help your site. I'm guessing that they are doing more than you suspect and are actually helping someone else's rating, or trying to collect email addresses.

Given that how they might be helping or hindering isn't known it's hard to say whether you want/need one or not. Writing a link crawler isn't a terribly difficult task though, so why not give it a try?