Seen in my Apache log file just now:

172.200.37.120 – - [14/Feb/2004:01:07:25–0600] “HEAD / HTTP/1.1” 200 – “http://www.drudgereport.com/” “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004”
172.200.37.120 – - [14/Feb/2004:01:07:28–0600] “HEAD / HTTP/1.1” 200 – “http://www.drudgereport.com/” “StarProse Referrer Advertising System 2004”

Now it’s possible that someone is doing this to discredit Drudge; the IP resolves back to an AOL dynamic IP address, a Google search turns up several sites where anyone can download this tool, and Drudge has plenty of Google PageRank™ already; he doesn’t need to use a referral spammer to boost it.

In any event, I have reported this incident to AOL’s abuse system. Those with particularly devious minds may want to see if this robot will follow a HTTP redirect (301/302) to a bot honeypot or follow an infinite redirect loop.