The internet is swarming with bots. In fact, bots are believed to make up 51% of all website traffic. While some of these are ‘good’ bots (such as search engine crawlers), as much as 37% of traffic is believed to be made up of ‘bad’ bots. These bots serve no purpose but to slow down websites, scrape content, hoard inventory or steal credentials. 

Keeping these bad bots away from your site can protect you from plagiarism and fraud, while also helping to preserve a good experience for your human visitors. Just how can you fight off the bots?

Here are just a few defensive measures that could greatly help to reduce bot traffic. 

Use a web application firewall (WAF)

The first line of defence against bots is a web application firewall (WAF). This is a network security feature that can filter incoming traffic to your site – identifying potentially malicious bots and blocking them.

Some people assume that WAFs are a default feature on a website, but actually they need to be installed separately.

Services like Cloudflare and Azure WAF are able to provide you with a WAF to configure on your site. There are also free WAF plug-ins you can look into. 

Employ rate limiting

Rate limiting is a way of restricting the amount of requests a user can make in a certain timeframe. It is a great way to fend off many bot attacks such as ‘brute force attacks’ (where bots try to guess a password as many times as possible in a short time frame) and ‘inventory hoarding’ (where bots try to order all your stock to create scarcity and drive up prices – a problem on ticket sites). This post at Imperva explains more about rate limiting. 

Block suspicious IP addresses

Noticing huge amounts of suspicious traffic coming from a specific IP address. It’s highly possible it could be bots.

Blocking this IP address can ensure your analytics aren’t skewed, while also preventing potential malicious behavior.

Be careful, though – you don’t want to blog a genuine user who may just really love your website.

Integrate CAPTCHA puzzles

CAPTCHA puzzles require users to take certain action to prove that they are not a bot. This could include trying to read distorted text, or identifying squares on a grid that contain a certain item, like a bicycle or car.

CAPTCHA puzzles are not entirely bot-proof as AI visual description tools can already solve the most complex ones, however they’re likely to be enough to deflect your average bot. 

Use advanced bot management strategies

Websites are now starting to consider more advanced strategies as a way of confirming human visitors. This includes facial recognition verification tools as provided by companies like PrivateID or behavioral analysis tools.

You can also use AI-assisted bot management software and plug-ins to give you a greater overview of bot traffic and its sources.

This is useful for websites that are prone to bot attacks or require a higher level of security due to containing highly sensitive data (such as online banks or medical services).

Final Thoughts: How to Reduce Bot Traffic and Protect Your Website

These are some of the best ways in which you can fend off malicious bots. Explore some of these options today to help protect your website and improve user experience. 

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