What is a bot and what does it have to do with scams?

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Bot fraud is a major concern for any company. A bot is a type of software program that is usually created to perform certain tasks that are tedious or repetitive. Companies like Google use bots to crawl websites so they can be indexed in search engines. But cybercriminals often use bots to commit ad fraud.

Bots are all around us and bot detection is not a simple task. Some of the bots are useful to make our life easier. For example, web browsers can be compared to honeybees; they perform a service that provides a beneficial outcome for people. On the other hand, some bots are used for fraud and other malicious purposes. Malicious bots are more like mosquitoes: they are nothing but troublesome pests.

Like any pest, they can become more problematic over time, multiplying and depleting resources. It's important to seek an "invasion" early to avoid major problems that could disrupt or destroy your income.

These 7 signs indicate that you may have a bot issue:

1. Mind the patterns. People make patterns, but most people don't make the same patterns every day. If you notice that traffic to your website is increasing at a certain time each day, it may be bot traffic. Unlike humans, bots are generally designed to repeat the same pattern every day without any change. Pay attention to the patterns you may see in your traffic as this can be an early sign of bots.
2. Bots are fast.
   There are even more sophisticated techniques that bot defense services can offer – such as examining visitor behavior down to the speed of keystrokes and mouse movement patterns. Some pages do not receive much traffic by nature. While a page may receive unexpected views due to a good review or successful promotion, a large number of views or direct traffic to your shopping cart on hidden pages is another indication of a possible problem. Watch out for customers who have the same unusual navigation within a short period of time. When you analyze the data by unique users, you see very short engagement times. This is a common fraud indicator. Bots tend to have very short engagement times — they're programmed to interact with your content for a very short time and then move on. Because of this, you'll often see them liking or sharing your posts before they even finish loading or clicking on links in your copy.
3. It doesn't look right. ‍You may have some popular pages in your overall workflow that you know customers spend more time on. However, a sudden change in bounce rates for a particular page can indicate a problem, especially if the traffic is coming from an ad campaign. This may indicate an issue with click fraud.
4. Your ideal customers aren't buying from you. ‍As mentioned above, promotions work, and sometimes pages become popular if a single product page becomes overly popular for no reason. However, a rapid increase in popularity not due to a campaign, review, or any other reason could indicate a bot influx. Check social media, customer service, and orders. If no one is talking about or buying the product, it's most likely bot traffic. For example, if you have a lot of people engaging with your posts, but the ones engaging are all bots and not real humans, this means there's something wrong. This can happen if someone is trying to manipulate likes or comments (such as by paying for them).
5. Keep your eyes on analytics. If your customers' activity is peaking at an unusual time, for example, you have customers primarily living in a specific geographic area (for example, Europe or the USA) and an unexpected surge of traffic is coming from countries where you do not offer your service (for example, Vietnam or Chile), it is a bot It could be a sign of an attack. Living in a 24/7 world, it's unusual for people to shop at certain times of the day. If most of your customers are located in California, a spike in pageviews or orders at 3 am in that time zone would be quite unusual. Watch for odd spikes for potential issues.
6. Be alerted about charge back files. Bot traffic can sometimes be designed to test credit card numbers or make multiple purchases to get as many fake orders confirmed as possible. If you notice an increase in the number of chargebacks or fraud reports, it may be due to bot traffic. If you think this is a problem, consider investing in stronger fraud protection software.
7. Money is the indicator. Advertising is often an imprecise science. Some promotions don't seem to work at all, while others take off right away. While a quick depletion of your ad budget may seem fine, it can be a sign of trouble. If your campaign is getting a lot of views or clicks, you should see at least a slight increase in orders and interest in the actual product. However, if your budget runs out without seeing a noticeable difference in orders or interest, bot traffic is likely stealing your ad money. ‍

Conclusion

While it is impossible to delete all bots from your website and ad campaigns, you can make it harder for them to access your site and take preventive measures. Bots aren't stupid, but they also aren't humans. The difference is almost always clear once you look hard for signs of anomalous behavior. If you are careful, you can also reduce the problems caused by bots. The best you can do is invest in products that prevent and eliminate these problems.

Finally, remember that bots can be good for your business, as well as bad. If you don’t have the budget or the time for paid advertising on social media platforms, bots are a solution to drive traffic to your website. The same applies to online customer service: if you want to provide 24/7 support but don’t have enough resources, chatbots are an affordable solution to engage with customers and collect data about their needs.