A software program created to carry out automatic operations online is known as a bot. Bots can mimic or perhaps completely replace human behavior. They excel at carrying out routine, repetitive duties. They are also quick and effective, which makes them the ideal option if you need to do a large-scale task.
Any non-human traffic to a website or app is referred to as bot traffic. This is a relatively common occurrence on the internet. It is quite likely that a bot has visited your website if you run one. In fact, in 2022, bot traffic will make up almost half of all internet traffic. This number has been increasing in recent years, and this tendency is expected to continue for some time.
You’ve likely heard that bot traffic is bad for your website. It is terrible in many instances. However, there are also trustworthy and good bots. It relies on the goal of those bots and the developers’ intentions. For the operation of digital services like search engines or personal assistants, some bots are necessary. Some bots want to break access to your website using brute force and steal confidential data. So, which bot behaviors are “good” and which are “bad”? Let’s explore these two categories of bots a little more.
Good Bots: Do they Disrupt Website Traffic?
The good bots carry out operations that don’t disrupt your website or server. On your website, they introduce themselves and tell you what they do.
Crawlers from search engines are arguably the most common sort of bot. Search engines wouldn’t be able to provide you with information when you search if crawlers weren’t visiting your website to find content. These bots are what we mean when we talk about “good” bot traffic.
It’s completely usual for a website to receive a tiny portion of its traffic from “good” bots. Other reliable internet bots besides search engine spiders include:
Business Bots
These bots are used by businesses to obtain information by web crawling. For example, research firms use them to keep tabs on market news; ad networks depend on them to keep track of and optimize display ads; and “coupon” websites collect promotional codes and sales offers to offer consumers on their websites.
SEO Crawlers
If you work in the SEO industry, you’ve certainly done keyword research or analyzed competitors using tools like Semrush or Ahrefs. These solutions must also dispatch bots to browse the web and collect data to provide you with information.
Feed/aggregator bots
These programs compile and distribute newsworthy stuff to your website’s visitors and email subscribers.
Site-monitoring bots
They assist you in keeping track of the uptime and other metrics of your website. They check and report information on your server status and uptime duration regularly so you may take corrective action when something goes wrong with your website.
Bad Traffic Bots
The “bad” bots were developed with nefarious motives in mind. Most likely, you’ve seen spam bots that bombard your website with pointless comments, unrelated backlinks, and obscene adverts. Additionally, you’ve heard of bots that snatch up entries in online sweepstakes or snag prime concert seats.
These harmful bots are to blame for bot traffic’s unfavorable reputation, which is well-deserved. Unfortunately, there are a lot of malicious bots on the internet today. It’s predicted that by 2022, malicious bot activity would make up more than a quarter of all internet traffic.
Why bot traffic matters to you
For the safety and functionality of your website
We’ve talked about a variety of malicious bot kinds and how they work. You do not want harmful bots skulking around your website. They will surely ruin the functionality and security of your website.
When you review your website analytics, malicious bots might not be apparent because they pose as normal human traffic. Your company decisions could suffer as a result because you lack the necessary information. You might observe irrational increases in traffic without realizing why. Or perhaps you’re perplexed as to why you get traffic but no sales.
The environment
More than you might realize, bot traffic has an impact on the environment, thus you should be concerned about it.
An HTTP request is sent to your server by a bot when it visits your website and requests data. This request requires a response from your server, which then sends back the required data. When this occurs, your server uses energy to fulfill the request. However, the quantity of energy used by bot traffic is tremendous when you take into account all the bots that are now active online.
To prevent dangerous bots from ever reaching a website, a bot management solution can make use of intelligence and employ behavioral analysis. Contact Web Contact Development today for a solid bot management solution.
