Have you ever seen unusual traffic patterns in your website’s analytics, like pages being crawled at a rapid pace or hit counts shooting up suddenly? It’s more than likely that this wasn’t just a surge of enthusiastic human visitors.
It was probably traffic bots.
What Is a Traffic Bot?
Bot traffic is when non-human visitors, like software programs, visit websites or apps. While it often has a bad reputation, not all bot traffic is harmful. It depends on what the bots are doing.
Some bots are helpful, like those used by search engines (Google, Bing) or digital assistants (Siri, Alexa). These bots are usually welcomed because they help with important tasks, like making websites easier to find.
Some people also use bots to test website performance by simulating heavy traffic.
However, some bots are malicious. They can be used for bad activities like stealing login information, copying data, or launching attacks that overwhelm websites.
Even less harmful bots, like those that crawl the web without permission, can be annoying because they mess up website analytics and can create fake ad clicks. They make a website look more popular than it really is by increasing the number of visits.
The visits from these bots don't represent real interest in the website's content or products.
It's estimated that over 40% of all internet traffic is from bots, and a large part of that is from harmful bots. That's why many organizations are trying to find ways to control the bot traffic on their sites.
How Can Bot Traffic Be Identified?
Web engineers can spot likely bot traffic by examining network requests to their sites. Using web analytics tools like Google Analytics can also help in detecting bot traffic.
Here are some common signs of bot traffic:
Unusually High Pageviews: If a website suddenly gets a lot more pageviews than expected, it's probably bots that are clicking through the site.
High Bounce Rate: The bounce rate shows how many users visit one page on a site and then leave without interacting. A sudden increase in this rate can mean bots are visiting a single page and then leaving.
The typical bounce rate ranges from 50-70%. A bounce rate over 70% might suggest bot activity because bots usually don't explore beyond the first page they visit.
Odd Session Duration: Session duration, or how long users stay on a website, usually stays consistent. Bots typically spend very little time on a site. If users spend less than 30 seconds on your landing page before leaving, it could indicate bot traffic.
Fake Conversions: A rise in fake-looking conversions, like account sign-ups with gibberish email addresses or contact forms with fake names and phone numbers, often points to form-filling bots or spam bots.
Unexpected Traffic Spikes from Unusual Locations: A sudden increase in traffic from a specific region can indicate bot activity.
Repeated Suspicious Traffic Patterns: Bots often operate on schedules, leading to consistent peaks and troughs in traffic. If you notice these patterns repeatedly, it might be due to bots.
Traffic Spikes with Low Conversions: A sudden increase in site traffic without a corresponding rise in conversions can suggest a high volume of bot traffic. Setting up custom alerts can help you identify these unusual traffic spikes.
What Are The Ways To Block Traffic Bots?
Dealing with traffic bots can be challenging, but there are ways around it. Manual monitoring might not be the most efficient method, but it can still help reduce bot traffic.
Here are four strategies to block traffic bots:
Understand Your Traffic
Get to know your usual traffic patterns so you can spot suspicious activity more easily. Analyze your data to learn about your typical audience, including:
The referral sites they come from.
When your site traffic typically peaks.
The average session duration of users.
When you learn all of these, it helps you understand how your ads are driving traffic to your site. You can then optimize your PPC campaigns by filtering out traffic from irrelevant search terms and pausing or adjusting campaigns that are experiencing high levels of invalid traffic
Set Up IP Exclusions
To block fake traffic, you can exclude specific IP addresses in Google Ads. This prevents your ads from being shown to these IP addresses, reducing the likelihood of bots visiting your site.
However, be aware that advanced bots can change IP addresses frequently, so this method isn't foolproof.
Here's how to set up IP exclusions in Google Ads:
Log into your Google Ads account and go to the campaign you want to manage.
Click on Settings.
Scroll down and select Additional Settings.
Find IP exclusions and enter the fraudulent IP addresses into the provided box.
Press Save.
Use reCAPTCHA
Protect your lead forms, contact forms, and other data capture fields on your site with reCAPTCHA. While some advanced bots can bypass reCAPTCHA, they will block many simple or moderately complex bots, preventing them from submitting spam leads on your site.
Examples of reCAPTCHA:
reCAPTCHA v2: This is the most common one. You’ve probably come across this many times. Users see a checkbox with the prompt "I’m not a robot." After checking the box, they may need to solve an additional challenge, like selecting all images containing traffic lights.
reCAPTCHA v3: Evaluates user interactions to assign a score, which helps determine if the user is a bot. For instance, a score of 0.9 might indicate high confidence that the user is human, while a score closer to 0.1 might suggest a higher likelihood of a bot.
Invisible reCAPTCHA: Operates in the background and only presents challenges to users when suspicious activity is detected.
Using reCAPTCHA helps reduce spam and protects your site from bot-generated fake leads.
Exclude Specific Countries/Regions
If you’re experiencing bot traffic from certain regions or countries, you can block traffic from those areas to reduce the bot activity. This saves you more time than manually excluding individual IP addresses each time new ones appear.
However, be cautious with this method, as it might also block legitimate users from those regions. Make sure not to exclude areas where you have existing customers or where you might want to grow your business.
Final Words
Keeping bot traffic under control is crucial for making sure your website’s data is accurate and that real users have a good experience. Since bots make up a large chunk of internet traffic, it’s important to take steps to handle them effectively.
Regularly checking your site and updating your approach as needed will help keep your data clean and your site secure. Being proactive about bot traffic ensures your website stays trustworthy and user-friendly for real people.
SO, WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS PARTNER?
Well, aren’t we glad you asked! We at DigiCom are obsessive data-driven marketers pulling from multi-disciplinary strategies to unlock scale. We buy media across all platforms and placements and provide creative solutions alongside content creation, and conversion rate optimizations. We pride ourselves on your successes and will stop at nothing to help you grow.
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