

Scraping: Within this category, there are both “good” and “bad” bots.Aggregation: These bots gather information from various websites or parts of a website, and collate them into one place.Website Monitoring: These bots monitor websites and website health for issues like loading times, down times, and so on.SEO: Search engine crawler bots crawl, catalogue and index web pages, and the results are used by search providers like Google to provide their service.And we also have those annoying and malicious programs like spam bots or form filling bots. On the other, we have simple programs that perform one or two simple tasks. On one hand, we have complex scripts developed by companies to collect a wide array of data. One thing to remember is that internet traffic bots are a very diverse bunch.

To understand how this kind of website bot traffic can be damaging, we’ll need to take a closer look at the internet traffic out there… Different Types Of Bot TrafficĪs we’ve mentioned, there are good and bad types of website bot traffic. What’s disturbing, however, is that 28.9% of all traffic is thought to be from malicious sources. The fact is that more than half of all web traffic is bot traffic.

“Bad” bots on the other hand can be unleashed infiltrate websites to steal data, spread viruses or overload servers with denial of service (DDoS) attacks.įor most end users, like browsers of websites, bot traffic isn’t really an issue.īut for site owners bot traffic is critical whether it’s to ensure that Google is crawling your site properly, to enhance the accuracy of your analytics results, to ensure the health and performance of your website, or to prevent malicious behavior on your website and ads. “Good” bots can, for example, check websites to ensure that all links work, collect useful data such as search rankings or to analyse site performance. With the ability to perform repetitive tasks quickly, traffic bots can be used for both good and bad. They simply do what they are programmed to do. Even relatively inexperienced web coders and program a simple bot with a little bit of study.Īlthough AI and machine learning is accelerating rapidly, at the moment, these bots are not sentient. Usually in a fraction of a second.Īnyone can create an internet traffic bot – in fact it’s the ease of making them that cause some problems. The program runs, searches the internet and delivers the required result. Often hosted on a computer server or data centre, bots are often tasked with performing a repetitive task or collecting huge amounts of data relatively quickly.Īlthough the image of a robot or crazy scuttling robo-beetle running around the internet is quite cool, the truth is it’s just an algorithm.
#TRAFFICBOT CODE#
What are bots?Īn internet bot is a piece of code that performs a task, or a number of tasks. In fact, all of those automated website traffic bots are designed to make our much easier. Your search results on Google would be more like Alta-Vista or AOL if it wasn’t for bots (if you’re old enough to get those references, you’ll remember that search results pre-Google were pretty rubbish). Bots are used extensively by online services to collect data from the internet, and to enhance our user experience. Bot traffic is essentially non-human traffic to a website.
