Bot Traffic and Its Effect on SEO

Bot traffic vs. SEO performance has been a contentious issue among the SEO Experts and SEO Community for more than a decade. In this article, We will discuss how bots impact SEO and whether you need to worry about bots harming your organic search presence.

What is BOT Traffic?

Before we dive into the main topic of whether bot traffic impacts SEO, let’s first know what we mean by the term ‘bot.’ Bots are programs used to run automated tasks or scripts over the internet, collect data, or perform specific tasks such as crawling and indexing. 

Anyone can create an internet traffic bot – the ease of making them causes some problems. However, even relatively inexperienced web coders program a simple bot with a little study.

Types of BOT

Bots can be divided up into two distinct categories:

1. Good Bots: Good Bot performs essential roles for the internet to function as we know it – including crawling websites, indexing pages, and performing various other tasks in the background.

Examples of Good Bots

• Search Engine Bots – Use to Crawl for search engines like (Google, Bing, Baidu, and Yahoo)
• Marketing Tool Bots – Collects data (Ahrefs, Mozbar, Semrush)
• Social Network Bots – Used to improve social media networks such as (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
• Site Monitoring Bots – (Pingbacks, Network Monitors)

2. Bad Bots: This kind of bot gets the most attention, are used to run illegal or damaging tasks that can cause damage to online web properties and perform tasks at a much higher rate than a human can. Bots can be used to hack or crack a website and gain financial or intellectual property.

Examples of Bad Bots

• Click Fraud Bots – It is used to manipulate & exhaust CPC spending and Increase Fake Traffic.
• Scraping Bots – These bots are used to steal or scrape web content.
• Spam Bots – Blog comments and general web spam.
• Malicious Attack Bots – DDoS bots targeting websites, web apps, and mobile apps

Why does BOT visit our websites?

BOT traffics used intentionally harmful or deceptive black hat SEO practices. The main reason for using bot traffic is unscrupulous marketing companies who deceive their clients into thinking that their marketing campaigns are more effective than others. Good BOT’s always visited websites to collect data and improve user experience. It depends on users and creators with which intention they are using it.

How to Recognize Bot Traffic

There are several indicators indicate your site has been receiving bot traffic. The most straightforward methods to determine the possibility that your website is negatively affected due to bots are given below

1. Suddenly a rare high volume of page views, visitors or traffic to your websites. This typically happens to some or all of the selected pages on your website when the pages are not ranked well in organic search results.
2. Bots with low session rates typically visit a page for a few seconds and then quit the site.
3. Bots with high bounce rates are known to go to one page and then disappear from your website. Bot traffic could affect the bounce rate of your website.
4. The spikes come from one place. Bots usually have one IP address, implying that you can expect every visit to be at least one of two locations. This is particularly evident when traffic comes from countries you aren’t typically in. 

Effect of BOT Traffic on Website SEO

Bots operating on dangerous terms are more likely to be information within Google Analytics. The more bots you have accessing your website, the more diluted it can become. If you’re unsure about the source of bot traffic, The most effective way to begin is to search for the traffic source you can find on the Google Analytics report. In most cases, you will find stories from others who had the same issue before. Then, based on the comments from the other web admins, you’ll be able to determine what steps should be taken.

Experiencing an upsurge in bot traffic? Don’t worry too much, says Google. Learn why the search engine says this has zero effect on search. https://t.co/N77fhisqst #SEO #Google – this will have no impact on your rankings, says Google. pic.twitter.com/GFFV6Ln42M

— Creative TRND (@creativetrnd) April 6, 2021

Server performance: A significant server performance slowdown could signal an increase in bot traffic. Due to the relationship between the speed of servers, website speed, and SEO performance, there could be a connection between the overload of servers and bot traffic affecting SEO.

How to Prevent Bot from Accessing your Websites

There are a variety of reasons certain people may want to prevent bots from crawling their websites. For example, it could protect gated content; in other cases, it could hinder hackers from accessing databases. Nevertheless, it’s better to know that protecting your site from online traffic could cause harm to your site and content.

1. Check the robots.txt file. This introductory text file provides guidelines for bots that visit your site regarding what they should and shouldn’t do.
2. “The “middle ground” is to set rules in place. The good news is that “good” bots will adhere to these rules. The downside, however, is that “bad” bots are likely to ignore the rules completely.
3. This is the point where the CDN service can help. One of the benefits of a quality CDN is the security they provide against malicious bots and DDoS attacks. One of the most well-known ones includes Cloudflare.
4. There are also custom-designed anti-bot products available to install, but it’s essential to remember that most of them can safeguard your site.
5. Block IP addresses manually in cases where you are sure there is a bot connection. Another method is to check the location of the traffic and block the region.

Bots and Bot Traffic are created intentionally for different purposes. Whether it is good or bad, as a site owner or business owner you always have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. NETMOW can help you to survive from this helpful content update. We can review your whole website and contents, re-write them as well according to the Google’s guidelines. Feel free to contact us for 20 min Free consultancy or Visit Us. Our online support team is available 24/7 in your service.