Bot Traffic

Bot traffic refers to non-human visits to websites or apps, which can include both beneficial activities like search engine indexing and harmful actions like data scraping or DDoS attacks.

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What is bot traffic?

Bot traffic refers to any non-human traffic that accesses a website or app. This can include both beneficial bots, like search engine crawlers and digital assistants, and malicious bots that perform harmful activities. While some bots are essential for the functioning of digital services, others can disrupt analytics, commit fraud, and even launch cyberattacks.

Types of bot traffic

Let’s take a look at the various types of bot traffic your website may encounter and break it down into the good and not-so-good categories. n’t be useful to block all packages from the false address as the sender can effortlessly alter this. Hence, if the recipient wants to retort, their response will be sent somewhere else rather than the real sender. This misrepresentation of the address is a core vulnerability targeted in many DDoS attacks.

Good bots

Good bots perform tasks that are useful and non-disruptive, such as:

Search engine crawlers: Bots used by search engines like Google to index web content so it can be retrieved in search results.
SEO crawlers: Tools like Semrush or Ahrefs use these bots to collect data for keyword research and competitive analysis.
Commercial bots: Companies use these to monitor market trends and optimize ads.
Site-monitoring bots: These bots check server status and website uptime.
Feed and aggregator bots: They collect and deliver news and other content to users.

Bad bots

Bad bots often perform malicious activities, such as:

Email scrapers: These bots harvest email addresses for spamming purposes.
Comment spam bots: They post irrelevant or harmful comments on blogs and forums.
Scraper bots: These bots steal content from websites, including text, images, and videos.
Credential stuffing bots: They attempt to log into websites using stolen credentials.
Botnets: Networks of infected devices used for DDoS attacks.
Inventory and ticket bots: These bots buy up tickets or products to resell at higher prices.

How to Identify bot traffic

Analytics tools can help identify bot traffic through the following anomalies:

Abnormally high pageviews: A sudden spike in pageviews can indicate bot activity.
High bounce rate: Bots may visit a single page and leave, increasing the bounce rate.
Unexpected session duration: Bots may stay too long or too short on a site compared to human users.
Junk conversions: An influx of fake account creations or form submissions can signal bot activity.
Traffic from unexpected locations: Spikes in traffic from unusual regions can indicate bots.

Impact of bot traffic on analytics

Unauthorized bot traffic can distort key metrics like page views, bounce rate, session duration, and conversion rates. This makes it difficult to measure website performance accurately and can hinder improvements through A/B testing and conversion rate optimization.

Filtering bot traffic

Google Analytics 4 automatically excludes hits from known bots and spiders. Users can also block specific IP addresses. However, these measures are not foolproof and do not prevent all bots, particularly those with malicious intents.

Impact of bot traffic on website performance

Bot traffic, especially during DDoS attacks, can overwhelm a server, making a website slow or completely unavailable. This can severely affect legitimate users and disrupt business operations.
Financial Risks
Malicious bots can cause financial harm by:
Click Fraud: Bots can generate fake ad clicks, leading to revenue loss and potential bans from ad networks.
Inventory Hoarding: Bots can add large quantities of products to shopping carts, preventing legitimate purchases and triggering unnecessary restocking.

Managing bot traffic

To manage bot traffic, website owners can:

Use a robots.txt file: The robots.txt file instructs good bots on how to interact with the site but does not stop malicious bots.
Rate limiting: Limits the number of requests from a single IP address.
Web application firewall: Advanced solutions like the Sucuri firewall use intelligence and behavioral analysis to distinguish between good and bad bots and mitigate malicious activities on your website.

To protect against bad bots:

Block suspicious IPs: Identify and block IP addresses showing irregular traffic patterns.
Use bot management solutions: Providers like Sucuri and Cloudflare offer tools to detect and block malicious bots.

Bot traffic can include both helpful and harmful behavior on your site. You can implement measures to manage them to protect your sites, improve performance, and mitigate risk.