As a digital marketer, I understand the importance of website traffic. After all, traffic is the lifeblood of any website, and without it, your website is essentially dead. 

However, not all traffic is created equal.

In recent years, there has been an increase in bot traffic, which can harm your website’s analytics and ultimately hurt your business. In this article, I will explain bot traffic, how to identify it, and how to filter it out.

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Bot traffic refers to any non-human traffic that visits your website. There are many types of bots, including search engine bots, social media bots, and web scraping bots. While some bots are harmless, others can cause significant harm to your website. 

For example, some bots can scrape your website for content, steal confidential information, or even launch DDoS attacks.

What is Bot Traffic and Why is it a Problem?

Bot traffic is a problem for a few reasons. Firstly, it can skew your website analytics. If you are using Google Analytics, for example, you may notice that your website traffic is significantly higher than usual. This is because bots visit your website, and Google Analytics counts them as legitimate traffic.

Secondly, bot traffic can also harm your website’s performance. If your website receives a lot of bot traffic, it can slow down your website and even crash it. This can lead to a poor user experience and ultimately hurt your business.

Finally, bot traffic can also hurt your website’s SEO. If search engine bots cannot crawl your website because of the high volume of bot traffic, your website may be penalized in search engine rankings.

5 Negative Impacts of Bot Traffic on Your Affiliate Website

Spam bot traffic is problematic for affiliate marketing websites for several reasons.

For these reasons, many affiliate marketing platforms have measures in place to detect and filter out bot traffic, and it’s recommended that individual affiliate marketers also take steps to protect their sites.

This can include using CAPTCHA tests, monitoring traffic patterns for signs of bot activity, and keeping website software and plugins up to date to protect against security vulnerabilities.

Top 5 Factors that Spam Bot Traffic Affects:

  1. Distorted Analytics: When bots visit a website, they are counted in the site’s traffic statistics. This can greatly distort analytics data, making it difficult for site owners to accurately assess performance or make informed decisions based on user behavior.
  2. Fraudulent Clicks: Bots can be programmed to click on affiliate links, creating false impressions of engagement. This can lead to inaccurate attribution of sales or conversions, causing unfair payouts and undermining trust between affiliates and their partners.
  3. Increased Costs: For advertisers who pay per click or per impression, bot traffic can lead to significantly increased costs with no return on investment.
  4. SEO Impact: Google and other search engines penalize websites for spammy behavior, including excessive bot traffic. This can negatively impact the website’s SEO and organic search ranking.
  5. Server Load: Large amounts of bot traffic can put significant stress on a website’s server, potentially slowing the site down or even causing it to crash, which can harm the user experience for genuine visitors.

What is bot traffic in affiliate marketing offers?

“Bot traffic” in the context of affiliate marketing refers to non-human traffic generated by automated bots or scripts. This traffic typically does not convert into sales or clicks on affiliate links, which means it can inflate perceived traffic numbers without actually benefiting the marketer. Bot traffic can sometimes be malicious, such as in the cases of click fraud or other types of attacks, but it can also be benign, such as bots crawling the web for search engines or other services.

Bot traffic is undesirable in affiliate marketing because it can create a false sense of performance. A high level of traffic with little to no conversions can indicate the presence of bot traffic. This can lead to skewed data, difficulty in optimization, wasted budget, and even potential issues with affiliate partners if the problem isn’t addressed.

Types of Bot Traffic

There are several different types of bot traffic that you may encounter. The most common types include:

Web Scraping Bots

Web scraping bots are bots that visit your website to scrape content. They may scrape your website for contact information, product information, or any other type of content. These bots can also collect specific types of data across multiple websites, such as product prices, reviews, or job listings, and compile them into a single place.

Spam Bots

Spam bots are bots that visit your website to post spam comments or links. They may also send spam messages through your website’s contact form.

Malware Bots

Malware bots are bots that visit your website to install malware on your website or steal confidential information.

Search Engine Bots

Search engine bots are bots that visit your website to crawl it for search engine rankings.

How to Identify Bot Traffic in Google Analytics

The first step in filtering out bot traffic is to identify it. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Google Analytics. Here’s how:

  1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and select the website you want to filter bot traffic for.
  2. Click on “Audience” in the left-hand menu and then select “Technology” and “Network”.
  3. Look for any unusual spikes in traffic. If you see a sudden increase in traffic, it may be bot traffic.
  4. Scroll down and look for any unusual locations or service providers. If you see a lot of traffic from a particular location or service provider, it may be bot traffic.

Google Analytics Bot Filtering Options

Once you have identified bot traffic in Google Analytics, you can filter it out. Google Analytics offers several bot filtering options, including:

Exclude All Bot Traffic

This option will exclude all bot traffic from your website analytics. However, it is important to note that this may also exclude legitimate traffic from search engine bots.

Exclude Known Bots and Spiders

This option will exclude traffic from known bots and spiders. However, it may not catch all bot traffic.

Exclude Traffic from ISPs and Other Organizations

This option will exclude traffic from ISPs and other organizations. However, it may also exclude legitimate traffic from those organizations.

How to Filter Out Bot Traffic in Google Analytics

To filter out bot traffic in Google Analytics, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and select the website you want to filter bot traffic for.
  2. Click on “Admin” at the bottom of the left-hand menu and then select “View Settings” under the “View” column.
  3. Scroll down to “Bot Filtering” and check the box that says “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders”.
  4. Click “Save”.

Best Practices for Filtering Out Bot Traffic

While bot filtering is important when it comes to analyzing your traffic, it is not foolproof and you might never filter 100% of bots out.. Here are some best practices for filtering out bot traffic:

Here are several steps you can take to filter out bot traffic:

1. Use CAPTCHA

Implement CAPTCHA tests on critical points of your website like forms or checkout pages. While this won’t eliminate all bot traffic, it can help filter out bots that attempt to interact with your site.

2. Analyze Traffic Sources

Keep a close eye on your website analytics. Unusually high traffic from a single source, a sudden surge in traffic, or high bounce rates could indicate bot traffic.

3. IP Address Analysis

Bots often use specific IP addresses. By regularly checking your server logs, you can identify suspicious IP addresses that visit your site with high frequency or in patterns suggesting non-human behavior.

4. Use Bot Management Tools

There are several tools and services available that can help manage bot traffic. These tools identify and block bots based on characteristics like IP address, user behavior, and other identifiers.

5. Integrate Advanced Web Analytics

Advanced web analytics tools like Google Analytics can help identify bot traffic. You can set these tools to exclude known bots and spiders.

6. Look at User Engagement

Human users will interact with a website differently than bots. For example, they will spend more time on the site, view multiple pages, and interact with forms and buttons. Bots typically have a very low level of engagement.

7. Monitor Traffic Patterns

Human traffic typically follows a predictable pattern, peaking during certain hours and falling during others (like late at night). If you notice constant traffic that doesn’t follow these patterns, it might be bots.

8. Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A WAF can be effective in filtering out bot traffic. It sits between your website server and the data connection and reads every bit of data passing through it. Based on the rules you set up, it can filter out malicious bots.

9. Regularly Check Your Analytics

Regularly check your analytics for any unusual spikes in traffic. This will help you identify bot traffic early on.

10. Use a Firewall

Use a firewall to block known bot traffic. This will help prevent bots from accessing your website in the first place.

11. Use Captchas

Use captchas to prevent spam bots from posting comments or sending messages through your website’s contact form.

Tools for Identifying and Filtering Bot Traffic

There are several tools available for identifying and filtering bot traffic. Some of the most popular include:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you identify and filter out bot traffic.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a DNS and security service that can help you identify and block bot traffic.

Akismet

Akismet is a plugin that can help you filter out spam comments on your website.

Why Choose Scaleo Affiliate Software?

If you are an affiliate marketer, you may want to consider using Scaleo affiliate software. Scaleo offers advanced bot filtering capabilities, which can help you identify and filter out bot traffic more effectively.

With Scaleo, you can also track your affiliate campaigns and manage your payouts in one place.

What is Bot Traffic and How to Filter it Out? - what is bot traffic

Choosing Scaleo, an affiliate marketing software with inbuilt bot traffic detection and automatic flagging, can offer numerous advantages for businesses and marketers looking to prevent spam traffic on their websites.

What is Bot Traffic and How to Filter it Out? - what is bot traffic

Here’s why:

  1. Enhanced Accuracy: With bot traffic detection, Scaleo ensures that your analytics are not distorted by bot visits. This gives you a more accurate picture of your website performance, user engagement, and conversion rates.
  2. Improved ROI: Scaleo’s automatic bot detection can prevent fraudulent clicks, helping to ensure that your affiliate marketing budget is spent on genuine, human traffic. This can significantly improve your return on investment.
  3. Trust and Transparency: By eliminating bot traffic, Scaleo helps maintain the integrity of your affiliate program. This can foster trust with your affiliate partners and advertisers, who can be confident that they’re only paying for genuine traffic and conversions.
  4. Optimized User Experience: By keeping bot traffic off your website, Scaleo ensures that your site’s resources are not wasted on non-human visitors. This can help your site run smoothly and efficiently, providing a better experience for genuine users.
  5. SEO Benefits: Reducing spam bot traffic can also help improve your site’s SEO. Search engines may penalize sites associated with high levels of spam traffic, so keeping your site bot-free can boost your organic search rankings.
  6. Saves Time: Scaleo’s inbuilt bot detection and automatic flagging save you the time and effort of having to identify and block bot traffic manually.
  7. Security: Automated bots can sometimes be used for malicious purposes, such as attempting to breach your site’s security. Scaleo’s bot detection feature can add an extra layer of security to your website, helping to protect your site and your users’ data.

The Impact of Filtered Bot Traffic on Website Metrics

Filtering out bot traffic can have a significant impact on your website’s metrics. For example, if you have been receiving a lot of bot traffic, filtering it out can result in a significant drop in traffic.

However, this drop in traffic is actually a good thing, as it means that your analytics are now more accurate. It also means that you can focus on improving your website’s performance for legitimate traffic.

Conclusion

Bot traffic is a growing problem for website owners and digital marketers. However, by identifying and filtering out bot traffic, you can improve your website’s analytics and performance. Remember to regularly check your analytics, use a firewall, and use captchas to prevent bot traffic. If you are an affiliate marketer, consider using Scaleo Affiliate Software for advanced bot filtering capabilities.

With these tips and tools, you can ensure that your website is receiving only legitimate traffic, which will ultimately benefit your business. You also learned how to filter bot traffic in google analytics, which will help you get a better insight into your real traffic.

Are you looking to start an affiliate program that will be safe from bot traffic, or looking to unify all your affiliate campaigns and add an extra level of protection to your traffic and clicks?

Try Scaleo free for 14 days or schedule a demo call online to see what it can do for your business.

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Last Updated on December 5, 2023

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.