What is Bot Traffic

Bot traffic refers to visits to a website or webpage that are generated by an automated software application (bot) rather than a human user. Bots can serve legitimate purposes but are also frequently used for malicious activities.

There are several main types of bots:

– Web spiders/crawlers: These bots systematically browse and index websites to be added to search engine results. Examples are the Googlebot and Bingbot. They are usually harmless.

– Scrapers: Scrapers automatically extract or copy content from sites. They may violate copyrights and terms of service.

– Hackers: Hacker bots try to find vulnerabilities in websites to exploit. They can spread malware or cause other damage.

– Spammers: Spambots post spammy content or comments, scrape email addresses, or spread scams on sites. They have commercial motives.

– Impersonators: These bots imitate human behavior to perform malicious activities like credential stuffing or skewing analytics.

Bots interact with websites in automated ways according to their programming. Typical bot behaviors include:

– Accessing pages or making requests in repetitive patterns.

– Quickly clicking links, entering forms, or crawling a site.

– Scraping and copying content from pages.

– Posting promotional or spammy content in forums and comment sections.

– Running intrusion tests to find vulnerabilities.

While some bots are harmless or even helpful for search engines, many bots cause problems for websites such as:

– Generating fake or inflated traffic metrics in analytics.

– Scraping and stealing content which raises copyright issues.

– Spreading malware infections to site visitors.

– Spamming and negatively impacting user experience.

– Performing credential stuffing and account takeover attacks.

– Consuming excess server resources which affects site performance.

Identifying and blocking bad bot traffic is crucial for any website focused on human users.

Identifying Bot Traffic in Google Analytics

Bot traffic in Google Analytics usually has some telltale signs that differentiate it from human traffic. Here are some of the common indicators of bot activity to look out for in your Analytics reports:

Suspicious Traffic Patterns

– Unusually high bounce rates and low pages/session – Bots often hit just one page and leave. They don’t navigate around your site like humans.
– Extremely high traffic spikes – Bots can blast your site with requests all at once, causing unnatural spikes.
– Traffic during off-hours – Bots don’t sleep! So seeing high late night/early morning traffic can be a red flag.
– Repeated visits from same user – Bots repeatedly hit the same pages in loops.
– Fast switching between pages – Bots quickly bounce between pages as they crawl rather than browsing slowly.

Unusual Referrers

– Spam referrers – Lots of keyword spam referrers could point to a botnet crawling your site.
– Blank or odd referrers – Malfunctioning bots often lead to missing or bizarre referrer data.

Suspicious User Agents

– Default user agents like `Python`, `Java`, `curl` – Legitimate bots often identify themselves in user agent strings.
– Random strings – Bots sometimes put random strings in user agent fields when trying to disguise themselves.

Strange Pages/URLs

– Parameter-heavy URLs – Bots hit URLs with lots of parameters as they crawl and scrape sites.
– Pages from old domains – If you see requests for pages on domains you used to own, it’s likely bots crawling old links.
– Odd file extensions – Bots sometimes crawl `.txt`, `.xml`, `.pdf` and other files.
– Pages that don’t exist – Bots hit invalid URLs frequently as they spider sites.

Keep an eye out for these types of suspicious bot activity patterns in your Google Analytics reports. Filtering out the bot traffic will give you an accurate picture of real human visitors.

Blocking Bots at the Network Level

One of the most effective ways to block bot traffic is through network-level solutions. These allow you to stop bots before they ever reach your website or analytics tools. Some options include:

Block Specific IP Addresses

You can block traffic from known bot IP addresses at the firewall level. Maintain a list of IP addresses that send high volumes of bot traffic and blacklist them. This prevents those IPs from accessing your site.

Downsides are that you’ll need to continually update the IP blacklist as bots switch addresses. It also doesn’t work for bots hiding behind large proxy networks.

Firewall Rules

Configure firewall rules to block traffic based on suspicious characteristics. For example, you can block IPs making an excessive number of requests per minute. Or block IPs that hit uncommon pages too frequently.

Carefully test rules to avoid blocking real visitors. The firewall should inspect traffic patterns and block IPs exhibiting clear bot behavior.

Reverse Proxy and CDN Filtering

A reverse proxy or content delivery network (CDN) placed in front of your infrastructure can provide advanced bot protection.

These tools can fingerprint requests to identify bot traffic. Rather than routing bots to your site, the proxy or CDN absorbs the malicious traffic itself.

This removes bots before they reach your servers or analytics platform. It also conserves computing resources on your infrastructure by blocking bots at the edge.

Limitations

The main limitation of network-level blocking is that sophisticated bots can evade basic IP and firewall rules. More advanced detection based on heuristics and behavior is needed to identify human-like bot traffic.

So network solutions should be combined with other bot detection approaches for comprehensive protection.

Blocking Bots in Google Analytics

One of the most effective ways to block bot traffic in Google Analytics is through the use of Exclude Filters. Here’s how to set them up:

Exclude Filter Settings

Under Admin > Filters, you can create a new Exclude Filter. Set the Filter Type to “Exclude”, then choose how you want to identify the bot traffic:

– Predefined Filter – Select bot traffic or spider traffic. This will exclude known bots and spiders based on their user agent string.

– Custom Filter – Manually enter the IP addresses, user agents, or other parameters of the bots you want to block.

– Advanced Filter – Construct a filter using regex patterns or other advanced logic to identify bot traffic.

Once created, apply the filter to the view where you want to block bots.

View Settings

In the View settings, make sure Bot Filtering is switched on. This will exclude obvious bot traffic identified by Google Analytics.

You can also exclude additional IP addresses under Bot Exclusion. Manually add any IP addresses you know generate bot traffic that is slipping through.

IP Address Exclusion

As a last resort, you may need to manually exclude specific IP addresses sending excessive bot traffic.

Go to Admin > View > View Settings > Excluded IP Addresses. Here you can enter individual IPs to block.

Use this method sparingly, as you may unintentionally block real human traffic sharing the same IP. But for persistent bots coming from a fixed source, IP exclusion can be effective.

By combiningExclude Filters, Bot Filtering, and Excluded IP Addresses, you can block the vast majority of bot traffic within Google Analytics. Always double check your reports afterward to ensure genuine users aren’t being excluded.

Blocking Bots in Google Search Console

Google Search Console allows you to identify and block bot traffic directly through Google. Here are the steps:

1. Sign in to [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console/about).

2. Click on `Security Issues`.

3. Under `Hacked, spammed, malware sites`, click `Request a review`.

4. Fill out the request form, providing URLs of any suspicious pages or links you’ve identified. Explain why you believe the links are suspicious.

5. Google will investigate and take action if any violating links are found. They may choose to discount them from your site’s performance reports, remove them from the Google index, and/or apply a manual action against your site if there is a pervasive issue.

6. You can also proactively block bot traffic by identifying any suspicious links on your own site and disavowing them. To do this:

– Click `Manual Actions` in the left sidebar.

– Choose `Disavow Links`.

– Upload a .txt file with any URLs you wish to disavow. This tells Google not to count their links/traffic.

Regularly monitoring for suspicious backlinks and disavowing bad links can protect your site from bot traffic being counted in Google Search Console data.

Detecting Bots with JavaScript

One way to detect bot traffic is by using JavaScript on your website to analyze user behavior. Here are some techniques you can use:

Bot Detection Scripts

Specialized bot detection scripts can be implemented on your site to identify and flag suspicious traffic. These scripts look for signs like rapidly clicking links, fast scrolling, and other non-human interactions. Some popular detection scripts include BotD, BotDetect, and JavaScript CAPTCHA.

When the script detects a likely bot, it can take actions like serving a CAPTCHA challenge, logging the incident, or blocking the request. The script runs each time a user visits a page on your site.

Behavior Analysis

JavaScript can track visitor actions like mouse movements, click patterns, and session durations. You can then develop a bot scoring system that flags unnatural behavior statistically likely to come from an automation tool.

For example, bots might have perfectly straight mouse movements while humans are more erratic. Or bots might click multiple links per second while humans have lag time between clicks. Analyzing these types of actions can help uncover bot patterns.

Challenge Questions

Simple challenge questions that only humans could reasonably answer can be presented using JavaScript when suspicious behavior occurs. For example:

– What is 5 + 3?
– Select all images with street signs.
– Type the word “human” in this box.

Bots will fail these challenges while humans can pass them to confirm they are real visitors. Failing the challenge could trigger blocking or limit access to site content.

Overall, JavaScript allows for flexible bot detection directly on your site based on user actions rather than just the user agent. Carefully implemented scripts can identify and handle bot traffic without affecting real visitors.

Blocking Common Bot User Agents

One of the easiest ways to block bot traffic is by blocking their user agents. User agents identify the browser, device, and operating system that is accessing your site.

Bots often use specific user agents that you can detect and block. Here are some of the most common user agents from bot traffic tools and scripts:

– Headless Chrome: HeadlessChrome and HeadlessChrome/
– Googlebot: Googlebot/2.1
– Bingbot: bingbot/2.0
– Google PageSpeed: Google Page Speed Insights
– PhantomJS: PhantomJS
– Python Requests: Python-urllib/
– Curl: curl/
– Scrapy: Scrapy/
– node-fetch: node-fetch
– Apache Bench: ApacheBench
– Yahoo Slurp: Slurp
– Baidu Spider: Baiduspider
– Twitterbot: Twitterbot

To block these user agents in Google Analytics, go to Admin > View > Bot Filtering. Click “Add a Bot Filter” and select “User Agent” as the filter type.

Then enter the bot user agent strings you want to block. Any traffic from those user agents will be removed from your Analytics reports.

You can also block bot user agents at the web server level, in your robots.txt file, .htaccess file, or server firewall. Just list the user agents you want to block.

Monitoring your site’s access logs can help identify any other suspicious user agents that should be blocked. By blocking the most common user agents, you can filter out a significant portion of bot traffic.

Using CAPTCHAs and Security Questions

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are a common method for deterring and blocking bot traffic on websites. When visitors attempt to submit a form, access content, or perform another action, they are presented with a CAPTCHA challenge to verify they are human.

Some popular CAPTCHA implementation options include:

– Google reCAPTCHA – Provides checkbox, image, and invisible CAPTCHA options powered by advanced risk analysis. Easy to implement site-wide.

– hCaptcha – Uses image and challenge options to block bots. Provides accessibility options.

– Simple CAPTCHA – Open source PHP CAPTCHA generator with customization options.

To add a CAPTCHA:

– Identify forms and actions where bots are likely to be a problem. Login forms and comment sections are common targets.

– Choose a CAPTCHA service and generate the necessary site key and secret.

– Add the CAPTCHA widget code before the submit button on forms.

– For other actions like content access, display the CAPTCHA via JavaScript on page load.

– Require the CAPTCHA to be solved before the form submits or action triggers.

– Validate the CAPTCHA response on the backend before processing the request.

Another option is to use honeypot fields – hidden form fields that bots will fill out but humans won’t. If the field has content, you can identify and block the submission as bot traffic.

Security questions that only a human could answer are also effective, e.g. “What is 5 + 5?” or logic questions related to your content.

Properly implemented CAPTCHAs, honeypots, and challenges can significantly reduce bot form submissions and other automated actions on a website. Monitor your traffic after implementing these to confirm the bot blocking effectiveness.

Monitoring Bot Activity

Once you have implemented bot blocking measures, it’s important to monitor their effectiveness on an ongoing basis. Here are some tips for keeping tabs on bot activity:

Metrics to Watch

– Bounce rate – Watch for spikes in bounce rate, which may indicate increased bot activity slipping through defenses.

– Pages/session – Bots tend to have much higher pages/session than humans. An uptick may signify more bot traffic.

– New users – Bots create fake new users, so monitor for any suspicious changes.

– Geography – Traffic spikes from unusual countries can be a sign of bots.

– Referral sources – Unusual referrers not tied to your marketing can point to bot traffic.

– Server logs – Directly analyze web server logs for strange user agents, repeated requests, etc.

Cleaning Up Tracking Data

– Filter bot traffic – Use filters in GA to remove known bots from reports. Reprocess old data.

– Reset user IDs – Scramble user IDs of suspected bots to clear their tracking history.

– Exclude IP ranges – Block entire suspicious IP ranges at the view level.

– Segment users – Isolate human traffic by applying segments filtered on pages/session, time on site etc.

Ongoing Analysis

– Watch channel trends- Compare web vs. non-web channels for discrepancies pointing to bot inflation of web analytics.

– Goal funnel review- Scan goal funnels for anomalies that could be tied to bots.

– Server log auditing – Do periodic reviews of raw server logs for signs of new bot types to block.

– Latest bot patterns – Stay up to date on evolving bot techniques to detect new bot traffic.

– Refine defenses- Continuously tweak defenses as new bot techniques emerge. Stay vigilant.

Preventing Future Bot Traffic

The best way to prevent future bot traffic is through proactive measures focused on best practices and site security. Here are some tips:

– Keep your site software and plugins up-to-date. Outdated software can have vulnerabilities that bots can exploit. Regularly updating WordPress, themes, and plugins is essential.

– Use strong passwords and limit login attempts. Bots try to guess weak passwords through brute force. Use long, complex passwords and limit login attempts to stop this. You can also use two-factor authentication.

– Be wary of contact forms. Bots often try to spam contact forms. Using CAPTCHAs and other measures like hidden fields on forms can help prevent this.

– Use a web application firewall (WAF). A WAF can monitor and block suspicious traffic and common bot user agents. This provides an added layer of protection.

– Check your site for vulnerabilities. There are tools that can scan your site for security holes and vulnerabilities that may allow bots access. Fix any issues discovered.

– Monitor traffic regularly. Keep a close eye on traffic sources and patterns to your site. Unexpected spikes could indicate a bot attack. Being vigilant allows quick response.

– Use exclusion rules in analytics. Create rules in Google Analytics to exclude any known bot traffic to prevent data contamination.

Staying up-to-date with the latest bot threats and being proactive about site security is key. Following best practices will help prevent most types of bot traffic from ever reaching your site. With the right prevention plan, you can protect your site from bot attacks.