What is bot traffic? The term “bot traffic” may have a negative connotation, but it depends on what kind of bots are involved. Some are essential for digital services such as search engines and voice-enabled personal assistants like Siri or Alexa. These are referred to as good bots. Other bots are malicious and can cause damage to websites. These are called bad bots and can include unauthorized web crawlers, credential stuffing bots, click fraud bots, DDoS attack bots, spam bots, and more.
Is bot traffic bad for SEO?
Identifying bots is challenging. While examining website data and network requests is a great start, the best way to identify bots is by looking at their behavior. For example, a sudden spike in page views that is not explained by other factors could indicate bots. Another indicator is a high bounce rate (where most visitors visit one page and then leave the site). Additionally, the language used by a bot can give it away. Since bots are often centrally programmed, a lot of them use the same speech patterns.
Malicious bots can hurt businesses in many ways, including skewing analytics data, eroding customer trust, and making sites unavailable to legitimate customers. Detecting bots and removing them from online platforms is essential for organizations to stay competitive. For example, if a ecommerce or travel site gets crippled by a DDoS attack, customers will likely switch to competitors and potentially erode brand value. To prevent this, companies can use an effective bot management solution that utilizes unique enforcement challenges designed to stop the most advanced bots.
