What is bot traffic, and how much is there?

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Bot traffic is made up of requests sent by software to a website or API. Search crawlers and uptime monitors are useful bots. Other bots scrape content, send spam, or try stolen passwords against login forms.

The amount of bot traffic varies by site and page. Review your request logs to see which pages bots visit, how often they return, and whether they cause failed logins, slow pages, or unwanted purchases. These checks help you choose which traffic to allow, challenge, rate limit, or block.

How much internet traffic comes from bots?

In 2023, bots accounted for about 49.6% of internet traffic, up from 47.4% in 2022 and 42.3% in 2021. These figures describe traffic in past years. Your site's bot share depends on its audience, content, and the activity it attracts.

Good Bot Traffic

Good bots perform beneficial tasks such as indexing websites for search engines, monitoring site performance, and providing customer support. Key types of good bots include:

• Search Engine Crawlers: Bots like Googlebot and Bingbot index web pages to help users find relevant information.
• Monitoring Bots: Tools like UptimeRobot use bots to monitor website uptime and performance.
• Customer Service Bots: Chatbots on websites assist users with queries and support.

In 2022, good bots accounted for about 17.3% of all internet traffic. These bots help maintain and improve the functionality and user experience of websites.

Bad Bot Traffic

Bad bots engage in harmful activities such as spamming, scraping data, and launching attacks. The proportion of bad bot traffic has also increased, reaching 32% of all internet traffic in 2023. Some common types of bad bots include:

• Spam Bots: Post unsolicited content on forums, social media, and websites.
• DDoS Bots: Conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to overwhelm servers and disrupt services.
• Credential Stuffing Bots: Use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to user accounts.
• Ad Fraud Bots: Generate fake clicks or impressions on advertisements.
• Malware Bots: Spread malicious software and create botnets.
• Scalper Bots: Automate the purchase of high-demand items for resale at higher prices.

Bad bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with many now able to mimic human behavior and evade detection. This rise in bad bot activity poses significant risks to online security and business operations.

Trends Over Time

1. Increasing Sophistication: Both good and bad bots have become more advanced, making them harder to detect and block. Advanced bots can now mimic human interactions, bypass CAPTCHAs, and evade detection systems.
2. Regulatory Responses: The growing presence of bots has led to regulatory measures. For instance, the California Bot Disclosure Law requires bots to identify themselves when interacting with users in certain contexts.
3. Technological Advances: Improvements in AI and machine learning have enhanced the capabilities of bots, making them more effective and widespread.

What to do about bot traffic on your site

1. Review requests to login, signup, search, checkout, and API pages. Look for repeated failures, sudden bursts, and repeated visits to the same content.
2. Identify useful crawlers and monitoring tools so your controls keep them working.
3. Choose a response for each affected page. Rate limits can slow repeated attempts; challenges and blocks can address higher-risk requests.
4. Review the results. Check whether unwanted requests fell and whether customers or useful bots were challenged or blocked.

Explore Peakhour Bot Management to see the available controls and plan an evaluation. Bring the affected URLs, traffic volumes, and current CDN details to a bot management discussion.