Uncover Good vs Bad Bots and How they are Generating Business
How many of you remember the Elon Musk and Twitter drama? In the end, he bought the company with one major question: Who runs Twitter, bots or humans?
According to reports, Twitter has around 330 million monthly active users. In which 5% bots on its platform. This means that there are around 16.5 million bots on Twitter. The figure of 5% is disputed by some researchers, who estimate that the number of bots on Twitter is much higher. For example, a 2017 study by the University of Southern California and Indiana University found that the number of bots on Twitter was between 9% and 15%.
But Why and What bots are doing on Twitter? The simple answer is, they can be used to spread misinformation, promote products or services, or sometimes just to generate traffic.
This blog is not about Twitter and bots. Instead, it focuses on the internet, a place that is constantly evolving. Users are either using the internet or being used by the internet and bots. This raises the question: Who runs the internet bots, humans or the internet itself?
Although no one can predict the exact number of bots on the internet, it is estimated that nearly half of all web traffic in 2022 was generated by bots.
What are Bots?
Bots are software applications that can be used to perform various tasks on the web. Mostly these tasks do not require human intervention hence easy to automate. These bots are used to automate the task of web crawling, website scraping, indexing, spamming, hacking, and more. Some bots are good and useful, such as those that help search engines or monitor website performance. Others are bad and malicious, such as those that steal data, impersonate users, or disrupt services.
The report by Imperva showed that in 2022, 30.2% of all web traffic came from bad bots, a 2.5% increase over 2021
What are Good Bots?
Good bots are beneficial to online businesses and can perform various tasks that help improve customer experiences, provide personalised customer experiences, gather data for research purposes, and automate repetitive tasks. Here are some common uses of good bots in online businesses:
- Search engine optimization bots that crawl the web to find ways to improve results
- Chatbots that provide customer service by answering questions and resolving issues in real-time
- Monitoring bots that monitor websites for uptime and performance issues, alerting website owners when there is a problem
- Web scrapers that gather large amounts of data from websites, combing through a site’s source code in their hunt for the information they’ve been programmed to find
- Partner bots deployed by vendors of solutions used on a site
- eCommerce bots or Shop-bots that crawl the internet looking for the most affordable product available on the internet
Good bots are deployed by reputable companies and typically make themselves identifiable while conforming to the rules/policies set by the website owners. They are an integral part of the internet’s infrastructure and perform many useful tasks.
what are some examples of personalised customer experiences provided by good bots
Good bots are used to personalise recommendations by understanding customer’s behaviour. They can suggest better products using historical data about customers’ last purchases. In decision making bots help to collect and organise the information required about a specific product. Personalised bots use advanced algorithms and machine learning to recognize patterns in customer behaviour and they collect the most asked questions, ratings which help consumers to decide the best products and offers.
Apart from this, The chatbots can collect various information about the user, such as name, location, email, phone number, time-zone, etc., while chatting. The bot can save that information and assign it to individual users by using attributes. Once the attribute is gathered, the bot can reuse it for personalised communication service.
What are Bad Bots?
Like good and bad people on this planet, there are bad bots which are used to perform malicious activities on the internet. They can be used to steal data, spread malware, and launch cyber attacks. Bad bots can also be used to scrape content from websites, which can lead to copyright infringement and other legal issues.
Some examples of bad bots include:
Spam Bots: These bots send unsolicited messages to users, often promoting scams and phishing attacks. These are also used to promote fake news and miss information.
Scraping Bots: These bots scrape content from websites without permission, which can lead to copyright infringement and other legal issues.
DDoS Bots: These bots launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on websites, which can cause them to crash or become unavailable.
How to Manage Bad Bots
Bad bots can cause serious damage to business if we don’t properly protect them. Here are some tips for managing bad bots:
Use a Bot Management Solution: A bot management solution can help you identify and block bad bots before they can cause harm.
Implement CAPTCHAs: Though this is not the best solution, CAPTCHAs are designed to prevent automated programs from accessing your website by requiring users to prove that they are human.
Monitor Your Website Traffic: Regularly monitoring your website traffic can help you identify suspicious activity and block bad bots before they can cause harm.
Who runs the internet bots or humans?
So, when we evaluate the amount of users and bots on the internet, we discover that it is a mystery world for millions of people, and it is equally handled by good and bad bots. Bots, which are primarily used for automation or data collection, can be highly common online. However, final judgement and decision-making are often reserved for humans. Without a doubt. Humans use the internet to consume content, interact and engage with other people, express their ideas on various issues, and communicate and consume information in various formats such as audio, video, and text. Humans can think critically, make judgements, and connect with online services in ways that computers cannot.
In the end, both humans as well as bots participate in the operation on the internet, yet they perform different roles and hold distinct capabilities. While bots automate certain tasks and assist with data processing and analysis, humans remain responsible for intention, creativity, and decision-making.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Bots and humans are all part of our online world. While bad bots can cause serious damage to business, good bots can be incredibly helpful. By understanding the difference between bad bots and good bots and taking steps to manage them, one can protect business and improve online experience for millions of users.
Reference:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearly-48-million-twitter-accounts-could-be-bots-says-study.html
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264226/human-and-bot-web-traffic-share/
https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/99339-47-of-all-internet-traffic-came-from-bots-in-2022
Josh Software 