Wondering what is bot traffic and how to stop it? Or still have trouble detecting it properly on your website? Maybe you’re an affiliate trying to avoid bot traffic for your offers to get higher payouts?
The article by MaxWeb Inc team is certainly for you, we’ll dive deep into bot traffic detection, its types, and methods to protect websites from bots. If you’re really looking for ways to avoid website bot traffic, keep reading!
What is Bot Traffic: Understanding the Different Types of Bots
First, let’s define the notion of bot traffic.
Basically, bot traffic is any type of website traffic generated by non-humans, usually served by automated software apps. Such bots click on paid ads, visit specific websites and do some sort of actions, like visits or clicks generation.
Obviously, this type of traffic is harmful to any website and is often viewed as malicious, the thing is that it affects Google Analytics data and is seen as fraudulent traffic. They are often used for such harmful practices as credential stuffing, data scraping and DDOS attacks.
Types of bots
Before learning how to actually stop bot traffic, it’s crucial to see and detect what you’re fighting with, so we’ve identified the most common bot types that exist in the affiliate marketing world.
Click Bots
Click bots are well-known for their involvement in click spamming, they are aimed at creating phony clicks on internet advertisements. Basically, it shows metrics in a wrong way and wastes advertising budgets without producing any valuable engagement, this practice is especially detrimental to publishers and affiliates who depend on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Businesses find it challenging to make wise marketing decisions and get actual profits as a result of such a distorted perception of ad performance.
Download Bots
Though they concentrate on inflating download counts rather than ad clicks, download bots function similarly to click bots. By imitating downloads, they fabricate a façade of user involvement that may deceive publishers about the success of their marketing campaigns. For example, these bots can inflate download statistics for a free report offered by a publisher, resulting in erroneous evaluations of user interest and engagement.
Spam Bots
Spam bots are a common form of malicious software that usually target websites to gather contact information or create fake accounts. What they do is interfere with authentic user experiences by filling sites with unwanted material, including spam comments and some phishing schemes. Moreover, these bots implement negative SEO strategies that can easily damage the online reputation of competitors, making it even more difficult for legitimate businesses.
Spy Bots
According to their name, spy bots operate like covert agents, they are specifically made to collect sensitive data from various online sources. To be more precise, they easily steal information such as email addresses from websites, chat rooms, and social media platforms, which poses serious risks to user privacy and security. Their ability to work quietly makes it hard for individuals to notice when their personal data has been stolen and used.
Scraper Bots
Scraper bots are made to steal content from websites on purpose. They are a substantial threat to any business as such bots are aimed at stealing valuable information like product lists and pricing details. This content is often repurposed by competitors, undermining the original publisher's efforts and potentially harming their market position.
Imposter Bots
Imposter bots mimic human behavior to evade online security measures, often engaging in activities like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. By looking like legitimate visitors, they can spam a website with traffic, leading to downtime and loss of service for genuine users. Such deceptive tactics make them particularly challenging to combat.
Now that you understand how these malicious bots look like, we’ll look at the ways such bots actually affect the website.
How Bot Traffic Affects Your Website
Obviously, bot traffic can have a huge impact on the performance of websites, by ruining site reputation, influencing data metrics in a harmful way and stealing data. Below we’ll look at each of the ways in more detailed ways.
Eights key ways bot traffic can affect any website:
1. Click Fraud
Bots can generate false clicks on ads, leading to lower ad revenue initially. However, it’s easy and quick to identify this fraudulent activity via ad networks, so it can actually result in your site being banned by these platforms.
2. nventory Hoarding
It’s especially true for eCommerce sites with limited stock, where bots can overwhelm your inventory by adding items to carts without purchasing them. This behavior makes products out of stock or unavailable for actual customers. Such activity can lead to decreased websites’ sales.
3. Lower Performance
Regular requests from bots can slow down your website, affecting user experience for all visitors. In extreme cases, excessive bot traffic can even crash your site, making it inaccessible.
4. Inaccurate Analytics
Bot traffic influences Google Analytics data, showing misleading insights about user behavior. This can influence affiliates’ and publishers decision-making and marketing strategies.
5. Increased Bandwidth Usage
A surge in bot traffic results in higher bandwidth consumption, which can strain server resources and lead to additional costs for your business.
6. Higher Bounce Rates
As bots usually do not engage with content in the right way, their presence can increase bounce rates, suggesting poor user experience and affecting SEO rankings.
7. Junk Emails
Bots may steal email addresses from your site, leading to an increase of spam or junk emails, which can clutter your clients’ inbox and reduce productivity.
8. More Fake Page Views
While increased page views might seem beneficial, they often come from bots rather than genuine users, creating an unreal image of your site's traffic metrics.
Now we’re a lot closer to the best ways on how to prevent bot attacks, below you’ll find the signals of bot traffic that will assist in stopping such fraudulent traffic.
Identifying Bot Traffic: Signs and Symptoms
Recognizing bot traffic is essential for stopping it and protecting your clients as well as maintaining your online reputation. Plus, it helps to avoid any profit decrease possibility!
Main symptoms of bot traffic:
- Unusual Surge in Pageviews
If you notice a sudden and unexpected increase in pageviews, it’s likely that bots are responsible. This kind of surge often stands out against your site's normal traffic patterns and is an indicator of fraudulent activity. - Increased Bounce Rate
To be precise, bounce rate measures how many visitors leave your site after viewing only one page. If there's an unusual rise in this metric, it may show that bots are visiting your site but not engaging with the content.
- Irregular Session Duration
Session duration reflects how long users stay on your site. A significant increase could indicate that a bot is looking through your pages, while a dramatic decrease might mean it's rapidly crawling through content, neither of which aligns with typical human behavior.
- Fake Conversions
Keep an eye out for a surge in suspicious conversions, such as registrations or form submissions that contain nonsensical email addresses or fictional names and contact information. These are often signals of bot activity.
- Traffic from Unusual Locations
If you observe a sudden influx of visitors from countries that don’t align with your typical target audience, especially areas where the language of your site isn’t commonly spoken—it’s a strong indicator that bots are present.
By monitoring these signs, you can better understand the nature of your website traffic and take necessary actions to mitigate the risk of bot activity.
Methods for Stopping Bot Traffic
So, how to stop bot attacks on websites or indicate bad traffic if you’re an affiliate? We’ve collected time-proven methods to apply and be a winner at all costs!
Invest in Legitimate Traffic Sources
Focus on acquiring traffic from reputable and verified sources, like ad networks that have traffic security. By prioritizing legitimate affiliate marketing, you can enhance your PPC or CPM campaigns while minimizing the risk of attracting harmful bot traffic.
Implement a Robots.txt File
What does it mean? You need to create and configure a robots.txt file to instruct web crawlers on which parts of your site they are allowed to access. This can help to stop unwanted bots from crawling your pages.
Utilize JavaScript Alerts
Incorporate contextual JavaScript that triggers alerts when a bot visits your site. This proactive measure allows you to monitor and respond to suspicious activity in real time.
Maintain DDoS Blacklists
Compile a list of known malicious IP addresses and block them from accessing your website. This tactic can significantly reduce the frequency of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Employ CAPTCHA Challenges
Use CAPTCHA tests on critical forms, such as sign-ups or downloads. These challenges are effective at distinguishing between human users and bots, preventing automated submissions.
Conclusion
Now you know all about the types of bots, the so-called signals of bot traffic, best ways to identify and monitor it as well as most effective methods of protecting your site.
Take offers from MaxWeb Inc, and drive your bot-less traffic to our offers to get increased revenue!
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