Humans generate not all the traffic on the websites. Some of the traffic is generated due to bots. In today’s digital world, we all have come across such things when before visiting a website; you need to check the box to verify that you are a human and not a bot.
Before we move further, let us first find what a bot is.
What is a Bot?
A bot is a software application that runs recurring tasks over the internet. The bots usually perform tasks that are repetitive and simple without the intervention of humans. The tasks can be performed at a much quicker pace as compared to humans.
Bot normally functions over a network. In addition, to add more surprise, bots generate about half of the internet traffic. It is used in several ways such as scrutinizing content, communicating with users, connecting webpages, and looking for potential attacks.
All bots are not bad. For instance, search engine bots are used to index content to make it visible to users and customers. Bad bots are devised to hack into user accounts, perform malicious activities, or scan the website to send spam messages and extract contact information. Bots, which are connected to the internet, have a dedicated IP address.
Some of the ISPs offer a security suite included in their plans. If you want to remain secure and protected from bot attacks, Cox protects you from vulnerable attacks by offering a security suite powered by McAfee. If you have any queries or need assistance regarding their plans and services, dial numero de cox en español.
How to Detect Bots?
Bloggers and webmasters particularly small and medium business owners are well aware of the discrepancies created by bots. It is one of the key security aspects of any business operating online.
Approximately a third of the world’s website traffic is the accumulation of malicious bots. When it comes to bad bots, there are some security vulnerabilities that online companies are facing and spending thousands of dollars every year.
The detection of bot traffic is now much harder than in the past. Bot developers are continually searching for innovative ways to avoid bot detection features of security solutions.
Moreover, bot developers are leveraging artificial intelligence largely, which makes it almost impossible to detect bots – it can’t be possible without the assistance of a technical person or AI.
Types of Bot Traffic
As we have mentioned earlier that not every bot is bad. Here is a list of some of the good bots and their functions.
icon-angle-right Search Engine Bots
Well known by webmasters and bloggers, these bots are responsible for crawling web pages and allow webmasters to get their site listed on different search engines including Bing, Google, and Yahoo. The requests made are automated and categorized as bot traffic. But they are surely worthy bots.
icon-angle-right Monitoring Bots
These types of bots usually detect whether the website is in a healthy condition or not. Webmasters to ensure that the website is constantly reachable and within the reach of users, monitoring bots help ping the site to confirm it is online. If the website goes offline or has some errors, the webmaster will be notified immediately.
icon-angle-right SEO Crawlers
In the digital era, getting the website on top of search results isn’t easy. However, there is a wide range of applications and tools to help webmasters improve SEO efforts by crawling competitors and their websites to check what they rank for and how well. The data can be used to improve organic traffic and overall visibility.
How to Prevent Bad Bots on the Website?
Protecting your website from harmful bot traffic is possible. However, the solution heavily depends on the type of bot traffic disturbing your website. Keep in mind that not all bot traffic is bad. If you are a webmaster, you should not block bots like search engine crawlers. Otherwise, you are going to lose much of your traffic.
If your website is vulnerable to automated traffic bots, and scanners, you need to have a shield or firewall to prevent such bots. The majority of webmasters rely on Cloudflare, which keeps your website away from bots. The best thing is that it is free of cost and anyone can install without needing technical experience.
You can also protect your website from bots by incorporating a robots.txt file by enriching it with the actual name of the bot or with user agents. However, in our opinion, Cloudflare is the best option to prevent bots.
Summing Up
Bot detection has gone more complex and complicated that can’t be handled by a layman. You need to trust only bots that depend on real-time analysis and how they can protect your digital assets from intensive scraping, DDoS attacks, and account takeover.