Bot Traffic Explained: Good Bots, Bad Bots & Measurement Noise
Bot traffic is website or link activity generated by automated software rather than a human visitor. Some bots are useful; others create noise or abuse.
Useful bots exist
Search crawlers, uptime monitors, link preview generators, and security scanners can all create automated requests without malicious intent.
Bad bots can distort marketing data
Click fraud, scraping, credential abuse, fake form submissions, and artificial engagement can contaminate reports.
Filtering depends on signals
User agents, IP reputation, behavior patterns, timing, device characteristics, and known crawler lists can all contribute to classification.
Do not blindly delete unusual traffic
False positives are possible. Investigate how the filter works before treating all excluded sessions as malicious.