Bots as an automation tool: examples, harm and benefit

[Man]

Tools for automating routine and large-scale processes are the power and strength of any marketer. They save time and resources and help achieve goals and increase KPI. Fraudsters also use automation to their advantage, but to the detriment of advertisers and webmasters. Let's look at how and what bots are used.

Contents
1. Examples
2. About useful and malicious bots
2.1 Good Bots and Automation Tools
2.2 Should useful bots be blocked?
2.3. Automation with Bad Bots
2.4 Why are bad bots becoming a bigger threat?
3. 5 ways to protect your website and ads from bots
3.1. 1. Excluding robots in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics
3.2. 2. CAPTCHA
3.3. 3. Firewall
3.4. 4. Hidden forms
3.5. 5. Bot blocking services
4. Useful bots - "Yes!", malicious ones - "No!"

Examples​

If you are a website owner who monetizes it.
Using such tools, attackers can visit the site, parse content, interact with resource pages, click on advertisements, and embed their cookies.

If you are the owner of an online store.
Automated tools can copy a catalog, collect price information (for competitors), buy goods for resale, spoil the statistics on the "basket", etc.

---

If you are the owner of a landing page/corporate website.
Fraudsters easily generate fake leads (if payment is for a referred client, application, etc.), subscribe to a mailing list, etc.

If you are an advertiser.
When placing pay-per-click or pay-per-view advertising in Yandex YAN and Google KMS, you may encounter an unpleasant surprise. The sites where the ads are placed may belong to the same group of fraudsters who are exclusively engaged in click fraud.

About useful and malicious bots​

Many automation tools are used by search robots (crawlers). Both webmasters and marketers know about them. However, we are increasingly faced with the problem of malicious bots.

Of course, not all robots are bad. But knowing which ones have a negative impact on the site and what can be done to block them is also important.

Most automation tools are useful. If you are an online marketer, you have probably used or are using a number of special automated tools. For example, collecting keywords, conducting a competitor audit, creating advertising reports. All this with the help of useful bots.

Almost every such tool will have one or another robot "sitting" to perform tasks. Let's see which of them are useful and which are malicious, and which are used in certain tools.

Good bots and automation tools​

Useful bots help users across the web interact with content on websites. Here are a few examples where tools engage them to automate recurring tasks:

• Search engine crawlers (crawlers): collecting information for Yandex, Google, Bing and other search engines, such bots generate results based on user requests.
• Social media crawlers: Can be used to gather information about popular hashtags, reposts/retweets of posts, and even provide useful tips in real time.
• Site monitoring bots: monitor the technical condition of the site. They ping the resource to track its performance and functionality.
• Marketing bots: used by SEO and content marketing services to scan a site: collecting the semantic core, keyword/phrase density, headings, positions by requests, and much more. Also used in PPC advertising, SEO, and social media analysis.
• Chatbots: These helpful operators automate communication with potential clients. They are not intended as crawlers of third-party resources, but some of them can collect information from the site and from other sources (for example, those embedded in the site).

Should useful bots be blocked?​

Good bots do useful work: crawl websites, help users via online chats, simplify routine SEO processes, etc. These automated tools would not be able to do their job if they were denied access to the site.

As for the influence of third-party bots of various analytical systems, Yandex and Google do not count them as actual clicks.

Automation with bad bots​

Bad bots are programmed to perform tasks that can harm the site and its visitors or advertising campaigns. These are not the automated scripts we need for targeting and protecting sites.

• Page scraping bots: used to steal content and collect contact information (to send spam emails). It is one of the most common and annoying automated tools that negatively affects the site.
• Clickbots: these fraudulent automated scripts are used for click fraud, such as: clicks on search results for queries to increase website traffic, boosting clicks on contextual advertising, and depleting the daily advertising budget on search.
• Spambots: Automated spammers are used to build backlinks through open comments on blogs, social networks, forums, etc. They can also be used as a resource for DDoS attacks.
• Financial Bots: Credit card fraud is often carried out using bots, which process thousands of such fraudulent transactions in seconds.
• Account hijacking bots: These hijack accounts with access to personal data and sensitive information, such as bank accounts and credit cards. Cybercriminals use the information they obtain to steal money or make fraudulent purchases.

Why are bad bots becoming a bigger threat?​

There are many malicious SEO and contextual advertising tools that go beyond simple scanning and data collection. Content parsing, link spamming, and click fraud are some of the most common methods of fraudulent operations.

In addition to stealing information and draining advertising budgets, these programs are also becoming more sophisticated and complex. They can now mimic human behavior, making them harder than ever for marketers to block.

In 2024, malicious bots accounted for 27.7% of all global internet traffic, up from 25.6% in 2020. They've even learned to bypass standard security measures — 65% of such traffic.

The activity of malicious bots on the network is growing, most of them are so "trained" that simple protection measures do not stop them. Therefore, an important task in this case is monitoring traffic, generating reports on visits, achieved goals and transitions, and additional protection measures.

5 Ways to Protect Your Website and Ads from Bots​

1. Excluding robots in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics​

Bots can distort the analysis of site visits, making it difficult to accurately interpret the data and make the right decisions. So the first step is to find out if this is possible and how to do it in analytics systems.

To do this, you need to go to the counter settings and exclude search robots.

Google Analytics
"Administrator" - "View settings" - "Robot filtering". Check the box next to "Exclude robots and spiders".

Yandex Metrica
“Filters” — “Robot filtering” — select the desired parameter.

Having learned how to block automated crawlers in Yandex and Google, you will receive more accurate data on visits.

2. CAPTCHA​

CAPTCHA is a fairly simple filter that can be called the first line of defense. It protects websites from bots using simple visual tests. They are easy for people, but difficult for robots. However, scammers do not stand still: scripts have already been created that can even solve captcha.

Of course, CAPTCHA isn't perfect. And some studies suggest it can even lead to lower conversion rates.

3. Firewall​

Firewalls are great for websites to block unknown threats. They usually have a built-in database of known malicious user agents and IP addresses that are automatically blocked.

One of the disadvantages of this approach is that some bots use hundreds of different IP addresses. And they can easily change them. Also, automated scripts can carry out their attacks from residential IP addresses with a positive reputation. If such addresses are blocked, then real users are also deprived of access to sites.

4. Hidden forms​

Some webmasters have had success blocking bots by using hidden fields and bait placed on their sites. The form code is placed in CSS, which is only read by scripts, but real users will not see it.

Such forms serve as a trap for bots, since the latter are configured exclusively to fill in all available fields. All "applications" through hidden forms are simply cut off in the future.

Use this approach with caution, because it has two drawbacks. First, smart bots can identify and ignore hidden fields, just like humans. Second, search engines tend to filter and ban such pages, considering this technology a method of "black" optimization.

5. Bot blocking services​

An obvious way to protect websites and advertising from bots and other malicious automated systems is special cyber protection services. For example, Antibot for a website or protection from click fraud in Yandex Direct and Google Ads with the Botfaqtor service. They are designed to filter spam, block DDoS attacks and malicious bots.

The advantage of Botfaqtor is that it blocks not only direct invalid traffic from search, but also fraudulent clicks on ads.

Useful bots - "Yes!", malicious ones - "No!"​

Most marketers are focused on attracting the largest number of potential customers, that is, the course is on lead generation. Also, among other things, optimization of conversion costs. However, many do not pay attention to the problem of clicking on ads and generating fake leads. And it directly affects the marketing budget.

The world of automation continues to grow, and more and more tools are available for many tasks that use bots. In fact, most internet traffic consists of automated tools such as spiders and bots. And many of them are used to commit malicious and fraudulent activities.

Blocking bot traffic is an important aspect for any advertiser. Especially within the framework of a large advertising budget.