How To Prevent Malicious Bots From Visiting My Website

Over 61% of all internet traffic is made up of bots. There are “good bots” and “bad bots”; the former refers to search engine spider bots that crawl our websites and help us get indexed by search engines, while the latter are programmed to carry out malicious jobs.

Keeping track of the bots visiting your website and their effects is a must. Read on to find out about the types of good and bad bots, and the ways to keep yourself safe with the help of a secure hosting plan.

The Good Bots 

Good bots crawl your website to assist user’s searches. For example, web crawler bots like Googlebot can help you to index your website. 

It starts by accessing the robot.txt file of your website. Next, Google’s bot proceeds to the sitemap.xml file to uncover the sections on your website. It crawls HTML unlike Ajax, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash. Remember to avoid using Ajax and JavaScript on important pages due to the lack of clarity on crawling on these from Google. 

You can help Googlebot by creating an organized internal linking structure. Keep track of the performance of Googlebot by assessing diagnostic reports and crawl errors using Google Webmaster Tools. 

This list will help you identify the good bots: 

• Search Engine bots from Google, Bing, or Yahoo. 
• Monitor bots conduct automated pings to ensure the website is online.
• SEO Crawler bots compare sites to create SERP.
• Copyright bots check for stolen content.   

The Bad Bots 

While good bots do a great job in helping your website get found and ranked, bad bots can burn it to the ground. In fact, a bad bot is programmed with the intention of carrying out such malicious tasks. 

These are often termed as “bandit bots” because they attempt to steal information, threaten a website’s security or fabricate identity - even with secure cheap hosting. The source of evil bots can be traced to competitors, cybercriminals, fraudsters, and illegal traders. 

As 38% of all crawling bots are “bad”, two out of five site visitors are dangerous. Moreover, these bandit bots skim through hundreds of thousands of sites at the drop of a hat, which takes its toll on the resources available on any hosting plan. 

Types Of Bandit Bots 

Letting bandit bots run amok on your website even with dedicated hosting will lead to website crashes and a low SERP in the long run. Take a look at the following four types of evil bots below. 

Scrapers

These types of bots are notorious for stealing personal information such as email addresses from forums and message boards. They often copy content from directories or eCommerce, airline, and real-estate sites.

Hackers 

Taking control of a website with credit card information is the focus of these bots and they do so by injecting malicious software or hijacking site controls. They can also add/delete/modify important data.  

Spammers 

By publishing irrelevant content, spambots can put off legit visitors. They can also post phishing or malicious links, which prompt search engines to blacklist your website.

Click Frauders 

By automating undue clicks on PPC ads, click bots can drain your marketing budget and prevent genuine customers from using it. They often target Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. 

How To Protect Yourself 

Whether you have a shared hosting plan or a dedicated hosting option, it is important to defend your website from bad bots. Take a look at the following ways to protect yourself from the four common bad bots. 

Protection From Scrapers

Running your material through Copyscape is an easy way to detect duplication. You can also make use of trackbacks inside your content to prevent data scraping. WP website users can activate the trackback feature in order to detect sites using stolen content. 

You can then register a DMCA complaint against the website. If you know the attacker, it is best to block their IP address from the feed by modifying the code.

Protection From Hackers

Admins can copy-paste common hacking bots into their .htaccess file under the public_html directory for protecting their website against common hackers. 

Protection From Spammers

Using plugins like Akismet for WP websites can remove spam comments automatically. You can also install another security plugin like WordFence to build a firewall against such attacks. Another defense mechanism against spammers is the use of mandatory CAPTCHA registration for commenters. 

Protection From Click Fraudsters  

By using the plugin Google AdSense Click Fraud, you can block the IP of the click bot by monitoring the number of ad clicks. It can also block specific IP addresses. Keep in mind that this tool is exclusively for AdSense customers and not AdWords customers. 

Bottom Line

Separating good bots from bad ones is getting tougher by the day, but it is doable. Protecting your website from scrapers, hackers, spammers, and click fraudsters can be easy if you take the necessary steps above.