Drupal Rules: How do I check if node is updated via edit form or via VBO?
This answer is slightly experimental as I have done something similar but not precisely the same. You may need to do further work, but here's the outline which will require a custom module that uses Entity API. What it does is create a custom node property which says where it was updated from:


Implement hook_node_submit() to check which form the node update has been submitted from and if it's a node_edit, add a custom member item to the node object, eg $node-&gt;is_node_edit = TRUE;
Implement hook_entity_property_info_alter() to add a custom property to the node entity type corresponding to the custom member as above.
Implement the getter callback you declared in that hook to be something like:

function mymodule_node_update_from_edit($data, array $options, $name, $type, $info) {
 $node = $data;
 return (boolean)@$node->is_node_edit;
}


You can then check the value of the property in a Rules condition.