redirect all bots using htaccess apache

Question

What .htaccess rewriterule should i use to detect known bots, for example the big ones:

altavista, google, bing, yahoo

I know i can check for their ips, or hosts, but is there a better way?

Answer 1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} AltaVista [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Googlebot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} msnbot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp
RewriteRule ^.*$ IHateBots.html [L]