How to resolve problems with my rating system?

Question

At this time I use for voting system in my site this code (is in a PHP file but I integrated as JavaScript in hope that crawler not see that):

$rater.= '<script data-cfasync="true" type="text/javascript">';
for ($ncount = 1; $ncount <= $units; $ncount++) {
    if(!$voted) {
         $rater.='document.write("<p onClick=\"parent.location=\'\/db.php?j='.$ncount.'&q='.$id.'&t='.$ip.'&c='.$units.'\'\" style=\"cursor:pointer\" class=\"r'.$ncount.'-unit rater\"></p>");';
    }
}
$rater.='</script>';

It's perfectly functional, but I must to make a way to take out db.php from link because google see this file and in this file is a 302 redirection .

But I found a site that is using the same rating system but find a way to make the rating system to work through the "rel" attribute.

Have anyone a clue how did they do it?

That's the original file with all php content:

<?php
/*
Page:           _drawrating.php
Created:        Aug 2006
Last Mod:       Mar 18 2007
The function that draws the rating bar.
--------------------------------------------------------- 
ryan masuga, masugadesign.com
ryan@masugadesign.com 
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
See readme.txt for full credit details.
--------------------------------------------------------- */
function rating_bar($id,$units='',$static='') { 
global $LANG;
require('_config-rating.php'); // get the db connection info

//set some variables
$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if (!$units) {$units = 10;}
if (!$static) {$static = FALSE;}

// get votes, values, ips for the current rating bar
$query=mysql_query("SELECT total_votes, total_value, used_ips FROM `$rating_dbname`.$rating_tableName WHERE id='$id' ")or die(" Error: ".mysql_error());


// insert the id in the DB if it doesn't exist already
// see: http://www.masugadesign.com/the-lab/scripts/unobtrusive-ajax-star-rating-bar/#comment-121
if (mysql_num_rows($query) == 0) {
$sql = "INSERT INTO `$rating_dbname`.$rating_tableName (`id`,`total_votes`, `total_value`, `used_ips`) VALUES ('$id', '0', '0', '')";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
}

$numbers=mysql_fetch_assoc($query);


if ($numbers['total_votes'] < 1) {
    $count = 0;
} else {
    $count=$numbers['total_votes']; //how many votes total
}
$current_rating=$numbers['total_value']; //total number of rating added together and stored
$tense=($count==1) ? $LANG->l('vote') : $LANG->l('votes'); //plural form votes/vote

// determine whether the user has voted, so we know how to draw the ul/li
$voted=mysql_num_rows(mysql_query("SELECT used_ips FROM `$rating_dbname`.$rating_tableName WHERE used_ips LIKE '%".$ip."%' AND id='".$id."' ")); 

// now draw the rating bar
$rating_width = @number_format($current_rating/$count,2)*$rating_unitwidth;
$rating1 = @number_format($current_rating/$count,1);
$rating2 = @number_format($current_rating/$count,2);


if ($static == 'static') {

        $static_rater = array();
        $static_rater[] .= "\n".'<div class="ratingblock static">';
        $static_rater[] .= '<div id="unit_long'.$id.'">';
        $static_rater[] .= '<ul id="unit_ul'.$id.'" class="unit-rating" style="width:'.$rating_unitwidth*$units.'px;">';
        $static_rater[] .= '<li class="current-rating" style="width:'.$rating_width.'px;">'.$rating2.'/'.$units.'</li>';
        $static_rater[] .= '</ul>';
//      $static_rater[] .= '<p class="static">('.$count.' '.$tense.') <em>This is \'static\'.</em></p>';
        $static_rater[] .= '</div>';
        $static_rater[] .= '</div>'."\n\n";

        return join("\n", $static_rater);


} else {

      $rater ='';
      $rater.='<div class="rating-text">'.$LANG->l('Rate this wallpaper:').' </div><div class="ratingblock nonstatic">';

      $rater.='<div id="unit_long'.$id.'">';
      $rater.='<ul id="unit_ul'.$id.'" class="unit-rating" style="width:'.$rating_unitwidth*$units.'px;">';
      $rater.='<li class="current-rating" style="width:'.$rating_width.'px;">'.$rating2.'/'.$units.'</li>';

      for ($ncount = 1; $ncount <= $units; $ncount++) { // loop from 1 to the number of units
           if(!$voted) { // if the user hasn't yet voted, draw the voting stars
              $rater.='<li><a href="'.WEB_PATH.'db.php?j='.$ncount.'&amp;q='.$id.'&amp;t='.$ip.'&amp;c='.$units.'" title="'.$ncount.' out of '.$units.'" class="r'.$ncount.'-unit rater" rel="nofollow">'.$ncount.'</a></li>';
           }
      }
      $ncount=0; // resets the count

      $rater.='</ul>';
      $rater.='<p';
      if($voted){ $rater.=' class="voted"'; }
      $rater.='>('.$count.' '.$tense.')';
      $rater.='</p>';
      $rater.='</div>';
      $rater.='</div>';
      return $rater;
 }
}
?>

Answer 1

If you add the attribute rel="nofollow" to the link, you tell Google (and other crawlers) not to follow the link. There's not guarantee that they will obey this, but most of them do.

An alternative is to use robots.txt (or you can use both), which can contain a list of urls or url masks that shouldn't be indexed.

You could also try to recognize crawlers in your script, but that would mean you'd have to create a list that is kept up to data and do a lot of checks on each request. Not the best option.

Anyway, I would work around this, by making db.php do nothing special if there is no logged in user. You wouldn't want a bunch of votes to be saved each time a disobeying crawler drops by, because every link is just saved anonymously. Such a voting system could easily be messed with, because one could just simulate thousands of upvotes just by scripting requests to that url.