Glossary entry
What is Bot Traffic?
Bot traffic is non-human visits generated by automated scripts. Some bots are legitimate (search engine crawlers, monitoring tools); many are malicious (scrapers, click fraud, ad fraud, credential stuffing). The 2024 Imperva report estimates 50% of internet traffic is now bot, with 30% malicious.
Types of bots
Good: Googlebot, Bingbot, monitoring services. Bad: scrapers stealing pricing, ad-click fraud bots, account-takeover bots, scalper bots, fake-signup bots. Differentiating them is the job of a modern bot management layer.
How bots inflate ad cost
Click fraud bots click ads to drain competitor budgets or generate fraudulent affiliate payouts. Conversion fraud bots fill out forms with fake leads. Both make your cost-per-real-conversion balloon while reported metrics look fine.
How to defend
Cloudflare Bot Management, DataDome, PerimeterX, or HUMAN at the edge. Plus Google Ads Invalid Traffic protection, Meta IVT filtering, and IP exclusion lists in your DSP. None alone is sufficient.
How Unled Network helps
DDoS Protection includes bot mitigation and rate limiting. Managed Campaigns applies IVT exclusion lists and audits invalid traffic monthly.
Related Unled Network services
Frequently asked
How much of ad spend is wasted on bots?
Industry estimates: 5 to 25% of programmatic spend, 1 to 5% of Google search.
Can I get refunds for bot clicks?
Google and Meta refund detected invalid clicks automatically. They miss a lot.
Does CAPTCHA stop all bots?
No. Modern bots solve most CAPTCHAs. Behavioral fingerprinting catches more.
What's the easiest first defense?
Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode (free) blocks the most obvious traffic immediately.