Computer programs called “traffic bots” artificially increase website and social media traffic. These bots can mimic human behavior, boosting engagement and traffic online. Statistics show that bots cause the bulk of internet traffic. In 2022, bots contributed almost half (47.4%) of all internet traffic, a 5.1% increase over the previous year.
This article examines how bots affect internet traffic and how they are frequently used to enhance site visitors. Let’s get going!
Key Bot Traffic Statistics to Know
- Bots accounted for 47.4% of all internet traffic in 2022.
- In 2021, 42.3% of online traffic was generated by bots.
- People generated 52.6% of all web traffic.
- Bad bots generate 30% of automated traffic.
- Good bots generate 17.3% of all internet traffic.
- Most Bat bots—66.6%—are elusive.
- Over half of bad bots are sophisticated.
- Around 33.4% of all bad bots can be classified as simple.
- Approximately 15.4 percent of the bad bots present a moderate level of threat.
(Source: Security Magazine)
What are Bots?
A web robot, otherwise called a bot, robot, or simply bot, is a program designed to run automated operations across the Internet. Such processes can be akin to human interactions, for instance, chatting, but usually at a much larger scale.
Bots are software that can autonomously conduct various tasks online, from mundanely completing forms to mining the web for specific data.
An analysis of the impact of bots on internet traffic is provided below:
What Percentage of Internet Traffic is Bots in 2023?
1. Artificial bots oversee 47.4% of all internet traffic.
2. In comparison, human contact produced 52.6% of all internet traffic.
3. Even though bot traffic is marginally larger than human traffic, we should expect more bots to attack us online.
4. According to the Imperva 2023 Bad Bot Report 2022, bots accounted for over half of all internet traffic.
5. There, 47.4% of all internet traffic is generated. From 42.3% in 2021, this percentage has climbed by 5.1 points.
6. Effective bots accounted for 17.3% of all bot traffic in 2022, an increase of 2.7% from 2021.
7. Even in 2013, bad bots made for 23.6% of total online traffic, compared to good bots at 19.4%.
8. 57% of it was made up mostly of people. Over the previous ten years, the transformation has been progressing steadily.
(Source: TechTarget)
What is the Impact of Bots?
This section reviews some of the basics of bad and good bots.
Good Bots
Search engines like Google and Bing employ good bots to categorize and index web pages and content. Example of good bots includes web crawlers or web spiders, which help to boost the importance and quality of specific search results.
What are Good Bots?
9. Organizations also use Good Bots to analyze their website performance and monitor competitors.
10. The use of Good Bots improves personalized customer experience.
11. Good bots are programmed to follow the rules and suitable protocols and not to interrupt web server performance or use too much bandwidth.
Other Uses of Good Bots
- Website monitoring bots: These are automated to monitor websites and notice their quality performance.
- Search engine optimization bots: These are bots that improve the results a person gets when using search engines like Google or Bing.
- Marketing bots: These bots crawl websites for organic and paid keywords, backlinks, and traffic profiles.
- Social network bots: Good bots that protect customers from spam on social media platforms.
- Fraud detection: They can prevent and detect fraud, spam, and malicious and nefarious activities. Also, they can see and block Bad bots.
(Source: Statista)
Bad Bots
Bad Bots introduce malicious attacks and dishonest activities compared to Good bots. It can be used to scrape data without permission. In this day and age, the depressing truth is that bad bots are overshadowing good bots. Bad Bots are more complex and sophisticated than good bots.
What are Bad Bots?
12. Bots that perform nefarious activities on the internet are referred to as bad bots.
13. Bad bots scrape information from websites without an agreement and are utilized to be ahead of competitors.
14. Bad Bots are the cause of fraud and other nefarious crimes. The bots are usually more complex and sophisticated, with just a few simple ones.
15. The report shows that 66.6% of Evasive Bad Bots, 51% Advanced Bad bots, 15.4% Moderate Bad Bots, and 33.4% were Simple Bad Bots.
16. Networks can experience distributed denial of service attacks due to bad bots.
What Percentage of Internet Traffic is Bad Bots?
17. Reports from researchers indicated that bad bots generated 30% of automated Internet traffic.
Other Uses of Bad Bots
- Click fraud: By viewing fake web pages generated by bad bots, advertising companies lose their reputation and billions of dollars yearly from click fraud.
- Account Takeover (ATO): Bad Bots illegally procure personal data like bank account information and credit card number—also, internet criminals program wrong bots to carry out credential stuffing and crack data breaches. Also, Bad Bots are the cause of brute-force attacks.
- DDoS attack: Distributed denial of service is a cyberattack that crashes a server by flooding it with requests to overload it. The intention is to interrupt regular services and to obstruct the actual owner from gaining access to their files and network.
- Web Scraping: scraper bots are another name for Bad bots, and they take data like product pricing and product description from the website without the business owner’s permission.
(Source: Anura)
Why Classify Bots Between Good and Bad?
18. Bots can be good or bad depending on their objective, and it’s difficult to determine the difference because they can mimic human behavior and go undetected.
19. Bots can be helpful or harmful. The good ones assist with repetitious chores, while the bad ones inflict harm.
20. Safari was favored by 20% of bad bots in 2022.
21. Good bots play by the rules, whereas bad bots break them.
22. Good bots improve the website’s structure and prevent dangerous activity.
23. Bad bots carry out cyberattacks and data theft.
24. Germany had the highest bad bot traffic at 68.6%, followed by Ireland at 45.1%, Singapore at 43.1%, and the United States at 32.1%.
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots
25. According to the analysis, bad bot traffic to abuse, misuse, and assault websites would increase by 2.5% to 30.2% by 2021.
26. In the internet world, not all bots are created equal. Bots software applications’ principal function is to accomplish activities quickly and on a wide scale. Those with good intentions are few and far between.
27. Bots can be used for beneficial or detrimental purposes. They are created to automate a dull, repetitive task to multi-scripts, working in uniform to emulate the behavior of humans.
28. Good bots improve human life, while bad bots are destructive to a business if they don’t take any safety measures.
(Source: Imperva)
Roles and Objectives
29. Bots that are good and bad have different functions and purposes. Understanding the distinction is critical for anyone wanting to run an internet business successfully.
30. Account takeovers (ATOs), expected to rise by 155% by 2022 and affect all industries, accounted for 15% of all login attempts.
31. According to studies, Bad bot attacks on Application Programming Interfaces (API) will misuse business logic by 17% in 2022. API suffered 35% more than ATO in the same year.
32. While good bots help businesses improve the consumer experience, bad bots compromise enterprise security.
33. Industries such as e-commerce, finance, and telecommunications must be aware of the various types of bots and devise methods to safeguard themselves from the harmful consequences of bad bots.
34. According to a report, the financial services industry will see the highest share of malicious bot attacks (12.7%) in 2022. The retail sector came in second, with 21% of problematic bot intrusions.
(Source: Kapersky)
Conclusion
According to recent data, bots control the internet, accounting for 47.4% of all internet traffic. Surprisingly, bad bots account for 30% of internet traffic and are responsible for criminal behaviors such as account hijacking, DDoS attacks, site content theft, and propagating misleading information. Good bots, on the other hand, account for 17.3% of internet traffic. It is concerning that bots receive more traffic than people, especially good ones. This highlights the critical need for immediate action to halt the spread of malicious bots and protect the internet’s integrity.
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Tyler Fields is your internet guru, delving into the latest trends, developments, and issues shaping the online world. With a focus on internet culture, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, Tyler keeps readers informed about the dynamic landscape of the internet and its impact on our digital lives.
