There is no doubt that technology has done wonders, and it continues to walk on the path of progress. But we all know that everything has merits and demerits. Technology has given us many facilities, and it has made our lives so much easier. However, as mentioned, technology also has some drawbacks. These demerits are depreciation in employment, an increase in the number of accidents due to technology, etc. Today, we will focus on one of the biggest demerits of the technology – “bot traffic.” We will also discuss some of the most effective strategies by which you can prevent your online business from bot traffic. Let’s begin.
What Do You Understand By Bot Traffic?
Bot traffic can be defined as non-human traffic. This means that bot traffic is not authentic traffic. Rather, it is generated by automated software through fake ad clicks. This traffic does not result in conversions and, therefore, does not generate any revenue, as it is not real at all. Some bots are not harmful as they just try to track the performance of your website. Some, on the other hand, try to scrap or extract data from your website or deliberately try to overwhelm your website with traffic ( fake traffic ) so that your website’s working gets affected.
Types Of Bots
Broadly, there are two types of bots – good bots and bad bots. Let’s discuss the differences between the two and why good bots are good and bad bots are bad.
Good Bots
Firstly, we will discuss about good bots. These perform several functions that make them good. The most common types of good bots are:
- Search Engine Bots: Search engine bots are among the most important bots. The reason for this is that they help you in indexing the pages of your website. If they do not crawl your website, then your website will not be found by web users.
- Monitoring Bots: These are another kind of good bots. Let’s understand what makes them good. Monitoring bots crawl your website and make you aware of several issues so that you can work to improve your website and enhance its efficiency. This allows you to make your site perform better.
- Copyright Bots: The Internet is the ocean of all kinds of data. There are countless websites and web pages, and it is not possible to access and check them manually. Copyright bots are the only viable option in this case. They crawl the web to ensure that no one uses anyone’s content without their permission.
Bad Bots
For every good thing, there is also something bad. The same holds true for bots. We just discussed good bots. Now, it’s time to discuss some common types of bad bots:
- Spam Bots: As the name suggests, these bots indulge in click spamming. They can create and distribute spam messages and emails. These bots are harmful because they can trick users into revealing sensitive and personal information. So, one needs to be cautious about these.
- Scraper Bots: Scraper bots are another kind of bad bots. The reason they are bad is that they can copy your content from your website and paste it somewhere else on the web. This is copyright infringement, and it can compromise the authenticity and reputation of your brand and website.
- DDoS Bots: DDoS stands for distributed denial of service. The goal of these bots is to flood your website with fake traffic to increase its loading time so users cannot access your website properly. This results in financial losses for your online business.
Are There Any Ways To Identify Bot Traffic?
You must be thinking about whether there is anything you can do to identify bot traffic. Friends, take a sigh of relief because there are some ways that can help you identify bot traffic on your website if there is any. Let’s discuss these ways:
- Speed Of Page Loading: When you notice a significant depreciation in the loading speed of your website, even when no changes are made to the website, then it’s a sign of bad bot traffic.
- Sources Of Traffic: Another thing that can be done to trace bot traffic on your website is to track the sources of the traffic that comes to your website. If a lot of traffic comes from a single source, then there is a very high chance that it is bot traffic.
- Verify IP Addresses: This is one of the most common things to check. You must check the IP addresses of the traffic that you get. If you are getting a lot of traffic from the same IP address, then chances are that it is non-authentic traffic.
- Older Versions Of Browsers: You must also keep an eye on the versions of the browsers your traffic is coming from. If a lot of traffic comes from an older version of browsers or old models of the devices (mobiles, laptops, etc.), then it is likely to be bot traffic.
- Tools: Finally, there are some tools that can help you detect bot traffic. These tools are pretty effective in detecting fake traffic.
How Does Bot Traffic Affect Your Website?
Bot traffic can affect your website’s data and content. They can alter the analytics by falsely increasing the number of page views and the number of users that visit your website. Bot traffic can also show false information regarding the IP addresses and locations of the users, thus interfering with your conversions. Ultimately, all these things will result in stigmatizing your business’ reputation.
Strategies To Stop Bot Traffic
Effective Bot Management
An effective bot management system can be used to differentiate between humans and bots through several techniques. Some of the best techniques are:
- Behavioral analysis can show the difference between the behaviors shown by bots and human beings when they navigate your website.
- Device fingerprinting can be used to collect IP addresses, and IP addresses showing weirdly high traffic could be blocked.
- Machine learning algorithms can be used to predict a bot’s behavior.
Several other techniques can also be used to differentiate between the behavioral patterns of a bot and a human being.
Use CAPTCHA Challenges
CAPTCHA challenges, such as arranging a puzzle or choosing a particular kind of image from a given set of images, can also be used to prevent bot activity on your site.
Limited Actions
Another effective technique that can be used for preventing or reducing bot activity on your website is putting a limit on the number of times a particular action can be done. This is a pretty effective way of differentiating between human behavior and bot behavior.
Educate On Bot Traffic
You should educate the people who work for you about bot traffic and how it can be harmful to your online business. They must also be taught to deal with it effectively.
Keep Yourself Aware Of The Bot Traffic Trends
This is also an important point. You must keep yourself aware of what is going on around you. You must stay updated about the bot traffic trends so that you can make decisions according to them for the security of your website.
Use Good Advertising Networks
The market is flooded with ad networks. It totally depends upon you to do proper research on several ad networks and then choose the one that meets all of your requirements. There are several ad networks that are genuine and provide authentic traffic. Some popular examples are 7Search PPC and Google Ads.
Conclusion
In the end, we just want to say that if there are positives to using technology, then there are negatives as well. Digital ad fraud, i.e., bot traffic, is perhaps one of the biggest negatives of technology. Bad bots can steal your site’s data, But there are good bots as well that help index your content and prevent copyrights. To prevent your website from bot traffic, just follow the strategies that we shared today in this blog.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is meant by bot traffic?
Ans. Bot traffic can be defined as traffic that is not authentic and is generated by automated software.
Why are bad bots harmful to a business?
Ans. Bad bots are a big threat to the growth of a business because they create an illusion of the actual traffic, even though the traffic is not real. They can steal your website’s content and trick you into revealing sensitive and private information.
What are the two most effective ways to identify bot traffic?
Ans. The two most effective ways to identify bot traffic are frequent checking of the loading speed of your website and the sources of the location of your traffic.
What is a CAPTCHA challenge?
Ans. A CAPTCHA challenge can be completing a puzzle, choosing a correct image from a set of images, or something else that can be used to detect bot activity.
What are some of the most popular ad networks that connect the business with a completely authentic audience?
Ans. Some of the most popular examples of ad networks that connect a business with a completely genuine audience are 7Search PPC and Google Ads.
