Bot traffic
What is bot traffic ?
Bot traffic refers to any non-human traffic accessing your website, web application, or API. While some bots (like search engine crawlers : GoogleBot, Bingbot, or SemrushBot) are beneficial for web analytics, others are malicious and abusive, being dangerous threats such as scraping, spam, or automated attacks. Studies show that over 47% of all internet traffic comes from bots, with a significant share of 37% being malicious and harmful (source : Imperva report 2025).
Good Bots Vs. Bad Bots
Not all bot traffic is dangerous. Let’s break down the difference :
Good bots (benevolent) : These Bots provide valuable services and are typically allowed by websites :
GoogleBot, BingBot, SemrushBot : help index your site for SEO.
Voice assistants (Alexa, Siri) : enhance search and content delivery.
Monitoring bots : track uptime and performance.
Bad bots (malicious) : Malicious bots represent a large portion of Internet Bot traffic today. These bots are designed to exploit your site, APIs, or data :
Web Scrapers : steal content, pricing, or competitive data.
Spam bots : flood your forms, comments, and reviews.
Credential stuffing bots : attempt to login using leaked credentials.
Click fraud bots : inflate ad costs by clicking on your ads.
DDoS bots : overload your servers to cause downtime.
Fake cart bots : reserve inventory and block real buyers.
The damage caused by bot traffic :
Bot traffic can significantly harm your business by :
Corrupting analytics : Fake sessions inflate your visitor numbers, ruin conversion tracking, and make A/B tests unreliable.
Launching DDoS Attacks : Bots flood your servers, making your site slow or unavailable, leading to lost revenue and poor user experience.
Stealing content (Web scraping) : Bots extract your pricing, SEO content, and proprietary data, enabling competitors to undercut you or duplicate your activity.
Generating Click Fraud : Bots click on your paid ads, causing :
Increased ad spend waste
Potential account bans from ad platforms
Disrupting inventory (stock hoarding) : Bots add items to the cart without purchasing, showing products as “out of stock” to real users.
Executing Brute Force Attacks : Bots attempt to guess passwords, credit card numbers, or access tokens, leading to account takeovers and data breaches.
How to detect bot traffic on your site ?
Common indicators :
Very short or excessively long session durations.
Sudden traffic spikes at unusual hours.
Visits from unexpected countries or anonymous networks (Tor, proxies).
Unusual form submissions or mass contact requests.
Frequent login attempts with failed credentials.
How to prevent and block bot traffic ?
Manual methods :
Filter known bots in Google Analytics.
Use CAPTCHA for basic bot filtering.
Monitor server logs for repetitive IPs or headers.
Block outdated browsers or agents often used by bots.
Best Practice : Use an automated solution : The most effective protection is a bot management solution like CloudFilt, which uses AI to :
Analyze front-end and back-end behavior.
Distinguish between real users and bots in real time.
Automatically block malicious bots without affecting user experience.
Provide detailed traffic visibility and filtering controls.
CloudFilt : the smart way to block bot traffic
CloudFilt offers real-time bot detection and automated protection for :
Websites
APIs
eCommerce platforms
SaaS products
Enterprise systems
It protects against all major bot threats while ensuring that your real users get priority access and your site performance stays optimal.
➔ Stop wasting bandwidth, ad budget, and user trust. Try CloudFilt today, no credit card required !
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