Bot Traffics. A snapshot of Bot Traffic. Types of Bot…
By: Shelvi Garg
Tags: Traffic, Bot Traffic, Bots, Network, Good Bot

In this blog, I discussed a snapshot on Bot Traffics: Types of Bots, how bot traffic affect us, and how to stop Bot Traffics.

Image Ref: Babylon Traffic

Bot traffic is any non-human traffic that visits a website. The term bot traffic is usually viewed as being negative, but it ultimately depends on what the bot is trying to achieve. The amount of daily web traffic on the internet is at an all-time high. But just how much of this web traffic is actually real? In recent years there has been a massive surge in online bot traffic thanks to the improvement in artificial intelligence and automated services.

With more and more bots being launched onto the internet every single day, is this a good thing for website owners and users, or just another annoyance?

Let’s explore different types of bots and what they do?

The Good Bots

i) Search Engine Bots: These bots crawl as much as the web as they can and help website owners get their websites listed on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc

ii) Monitoring Bots: To help users ensure their site is always accessible, there is a range of website monitoring bots out there that will automatically ping your site to ensure it’s still online.

iii) SEO Crawlers: There is a range of software out there that can help improve your SEO efforts(making your site No.1) by crawling your site and competitors to see what you rank for and how well. Webmasters can then use this data to improve their search visibility and improve their organic web traffic.

iv) Copyright Bots: Copyright bots crawl the web scanning for specific images to ensure nobody is illegally using any copyrighted content without permission.

The Bad Bots

Unlike the good bots we just mentioned above, bad bots do really bad things to your website and can cause a lot of damage if left to roam free.

i) Web Scrapers: Web scrapers are annoying malicious bots that scrape websites looking for valuable information such as email address and contact details. In other cases, they will steal content and images from websites and use them on their own site without permission.

ii) Spam Bots: Spambots leave generated messages (that often make no sense) on a website’s blog. They also fill out contact forms on websites and spam owners with promotional messages.

iii) Vulnerability Scanners: There is a range of malicious bots out there that will scan millions of sites for vulnerabilities and report them back to their creator or to one person who will then most likely sell the information or use it themselves to hack websites.

How Can Traffic Bots Be Bad for Websites?

Having lots of bots on your website will usually lead to things such as:

More page views, Higher bandwidth usage, Incorrect Google Analytics, decrease in conversions, Junk emails, Longer load times, Higher server costs,

Increased bounce rate.

How to STOP Bot Traffic

Google Analytics is the best place to start if you want to check to see if your website is being affected by bots.

In Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see all the essential site metrics, such as average time on page, bounce rate, number of page views, and other analytics data. Using this information you can quickly determine if your site’s

analytics data has been skewed by bot traffic and to what extent.

TRICKS TO IDENTIFY:

Firstly, a very low time on site metric is a clear indicator that most of your visitors could be bots. It only takes an automated bot just a

few seconds to crawl a webpage before it leaves and moves onto its next target.

Secondly, you can refer to the referrals section to check if you aren’t receiving any referral spam. Many companies target other sites with a custom bot that

will spam their website URL.

When a webmaster checks their referral traffic in Google Analytics they’ll see the name of the website and be inclined to visit. As crude as this sounds, it can help generate the site quite a lot of visitors (mainly out of curiosity!). It might not sound like they are doing harm to your website, but they are actually

skewing all of your metrics, wasting your bandwidth, and clogging up your server in general.

Stopping Bot Traffic

Stopping bot traffic from harming your website is completely possible, but the the solution will depend on the type of bot traffic that is affecting your site.

Remember, not all bot traffic is bad, and blocking bots such as search engine crawlers are really not a good idea!

If your website is prone to be scraped by robots, vulnerability scanners, and automated traffic bots, then the chances are you’ll want some protection in the form of a firewall or shield. The best way to do this is to install a free service on your website called Cloudflare.

This service acts as a barrier between the website and user, meaning it will only allow legitimate users to access your website. Any suspicious users won’t make it past and won’t get to access your site.

However, if you’re looking to protect your website from other forms of bots such as fraudulent and repetitive clicks on your ads, then you’ll need something else.