How to protect your website from bots
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2025 7:13 am
In this article we will tell you what bots are and how to deal with them.
Types of bots
Search robots are considered non-threatening. They search for pages on the web, index them, and include them in search results. You don't need to worry about such bots if your site is well optimized.
There are types of bots that at first glance seem harmless:
Bots for assessing the quality of a resource. They botim database check the site for functionality, look for problems with loading, broken links and heavy images.
SEO bots. They help analyze competitors and track your ranking.
But even if bots do not have the goal of harming the site, they can increase the load on the server. Therefore, many site owners take measures to protect themselves from such "guests".
Why are malicious bots dangerous?
Malicious bots typically impersonate humans by behaving in a way that is human-like. For example, they may:
Clicking on ads on a website. Clickbots significantly distort statistics, as there are many impressions and clicks, but no sales.
Fill out forms on the website. For example, one form intended for real users receives up to a hundred submissions daily, containing advertising materials or randomly entered numbers.
Leave comments on products or articles. Bots writing fake and negative reviews.
Simulate cheating. Setting the task of improving behavioral factors by bots may be aimed at worsening the reputation of the site in front of search robots, which contributes to the site falling under filters. Some site owners or employees of advertising agencies may use such methods for promotion.
Send a huge number of requests to the site. Directing DDoS attacks to the resource in order to disable it.
Checking for bot traffic on a website
Try to notice suspicious activity immediately before serious problems arise.
You can identify bot traffic by the following factors:
Users with strange behavior have appeared. Quickly following links and visiting the same page several times.
Pageviews that are excluded from indexing have appeared. Bots are able to crawl and visit pages that are excluded from indexing or that are not visited by real users.
Increased activity on the site at unusual times.
The number of refusals has increased.
Traffic increased, but conversion remained unchanged.
Protecting your website from bots
Let's look at three ways to protect your site from "bad" bots.
CAPTCHA
A method of protection known to most Internet users. Captcha is a small check that appears on resources to ensure that the action is performed by a person and not an automated program. Captcha can be asked to recognize an image, solve a problem, perform a mathematical calculation, or other similar action to confirm that you are a real user.
Blocking IP addresses
One of the most common methods of protection, which is often used as a temporary solution, is blocking by IP address. However, this protection requires creating blocking rules or blocking individual addresses manually. Today, the use of proxy servers has become so widespread that it is easy to change the IP address and bypass the blocking.
Built-in DDoS protection
Here we are talking about built-in DDoS protection tools provided by hosting providers. These options are convenient because you don’t have to choose services and solutions yourself, everything is already thought out for you. Just connect to a tariff with protection and use it. IP address filters, blocking of repeated requests, tracking of user behavior, definition of “good” and “bad” bots - all this is provided by your hosting provider.
Typically, minimum protection is already included in the basic plan, and for an additional fee you can get advanced protection features or settings.
Conclusion
In this article, we looked into the issue of bot traffic and what to do with malicious bots. Don't forget to secure your site in advance so you don't have to deal with the consequences later.
Types of bots
Search robots are considered non-threatening. They search for pages on the web, index them, and include them in search results. You don't need to worry about such bots if your site is well optimized.
There are types of bots that at first glance seem harmless:
Bots for assessing the quality of a resource. They botim database check the site for functionality, look for problems with loading, broken links and heavy images.
SEO bots. They help analyze competitors and track your ranking.
But even if bots do not have the goal of harming the site, they can increase the load on the server. Therefore, many site owners take measures to protect themselves from such "guests".
Why are malicious bots dangerous?
Malicious bots typically impersonate humans by behaving in a way that is human-like. For example, they may:
Clicking on ads on a website. Clickbots significantly distort statistics, as there are many impressions and clicks, but no sales.
Fill out forms on the website. For example, one form intended for real users receives up to a hundred submissions daily, containing advertising materials or randomly entered numbers.
Leave comments on products or articles. Bots writing fake and negative reviews.
Simulate cheating. Setting the task of improving behavioral factors by bots may be aimed at worsening the reputation of the site in front of search robots, which contributes to the site falling under filters. Some site owners or employees of advertising agencies may use such methods for promotion.
Send a huge number of requests to the site. Directing DDoS attacks to the resource in order to disable it.
Checking for bot traffic on a website
Try to notice suspicious activity immediately before serious problems arise.
You can identify bot traffic by the following factors:
Users with strange behavior have appeared. Quickly following links and visiting the same page several times.
Pageviews that are excluded from indexing have appeared. Bots are able to crawl and visit pages that are excluded from indexing or that are not visited by real users.
Increased activity on the site at unusual times.
The number of refusals has increased.
Traffic increased, but conversion remained unchanged.
Protecting your website from bots
Let's look at three ways to protect your site from "bad" bots.
CAPTCHA
A method of protection known to most Internet users. Captcha is a small check that appears on resources to ensure that the action is performed by a person and not an automated program. Captcha can be asked to recognize an image, solve a problem, perform a mathematical calculation, or other similar action to confirm that you are a real user.
Blocking IP addresses
One of the most common methods of protection, which is often used as a temporary solution, is blocking by IP address. However, this protection requires creating blocking rules or blocking individual addresses manually. Today, the use of proxy servers has become so widespread that it is easy to change the IP address and bypass the blocking.
Built-in DDoS protection
Here we are talking about built-in DDoS protection tools provided by hosting providers. These options are convenient because you don’t have to choose services and solutions yourself, everything is already thought out for you. Just connect to a tariff with protection and use it. IP address filters, blocking of repeated requests, tracking of user behavior, definition of “good” and “bad” bots - all this is provided by your hosting provider.
Typically, minimum protection is already included in the basic plan, and for an additional fee you can get advanced protection features or settings.
Conclusion
In this article, we looked into the issue of bot traffic and what to do with malicious bots. Don't forget to secure your site in advance so you don't have to deal with the consequences later.