Affiliate marketing Affiliate Scams – Traffic Bot
Affiliate marketing is legal and safe if each party to the cooperation honestly follows all the rules. Unfortunately, just like in any other industry, you also have to reckon with various types of fraud. They can affect both publishers and advertisers. One of the affiliate scams is the generation of traffic by bots. Using bots or similar programs makes it possible to increase clicks or extort transactions. It is worth learning more about this phenomenon in order to be able to protect yourself from it. There are, of course, bots that are helpful, but those that generate fake traffic are simply harmful to advertisers. An affiliate agency like Onaffiliate will help with any affiliation-related issues.
Bot and its role on the Internet
A bot is a computer program whose job is to perform automated actions on the web. Depending on the application, it can mimic the action of a human in order to interact with a real person. The functioning of the bot is based on an artificial intelligence algorithm. Useful bots are used for indexing or monitoring websites, as a customer service tool, intelligent assistants or help in online marketing. Harmful bots include those generating spam, web scraping, credential stiffing, and DDoS attacks, as well as ad fraud. Web bots are legal as long as they don’t perform any malicious activities. The bot itself is, after all, just a web-based program. However, sometimes it is difficult to recognize that you are dealing with a bot. If you are suspicious, for example, about a social media profile, it is worth looking for suspicious links, photos and paying attention to the lack of basic information. A bot can also be identified by hesitation in answering a difficult question and robotic language. Malicious bots are also used in affiliation. It’s a good idea to be honest and work with an agency like Onaffiliate. It will help you create effective affiliate campaigns.
Traffic bot and fraudulent use of bots
A traffic bot is traffic artificially generated by bots visiting a website. It is the opposite of human traffic. These two types of traffic are not created equal, especially in the eyes of advertisers. Traffic bot can even result in removal from ad networks. Bots are used for a variety of purposes. Web srapping is the crawling of websites and the collection of specific data. Some bots are used to generate huge amounts of traffic in order to harm the website by overloading the server. They are also used to artificially increase the number of page views or clicks on an ad. Most often, bots attack in the following areas in terms of billing method: CPM/CPV, CPC, CPL, and CPA. Affiliate marketing can suffer from this type of fraudulent activity, as its reputation among outsiders decreases. Publishers and advertisers can use Onaffiliate‘s services to ensure honest business and expand their affiliate knowledge.
Types of traffic bot
There are different types of traffic bots. The first is AI crawlers. They scan websites to train AI-based tools. Click bots are designed to mimic human behavior, such as clicking on ads that are supposed to redirect users to the advertiser’s website, browse the web, or even add products to the cart. Download bots download web products. They are designed to generate downloads of software and mobile applications. DDoS bots are responsible for carrying out Distributed Denial of Service attacks. By doing so, they disrupt and slow down the regular flow of traffic to a particular server, service, or network. Scraping bots, on the other hand, extract data from websites and then sell it. Unfortunately, the result of bots distributing content in such a way can be that it is flagged as plagiarism. Spam bots are a very broad category, they perform various activities – from creating fake accounts to sending spam emails for advertising or phishing purposes. Last but not least are spying bots that steal user data and information. Their common activity is the collection of email addresses. If you want to educate yourself in this area, it is worth using reliable sources. It is a good affiliate agency, such as Onaffiliate.
Recognition and blockade
In order to detect fraud related to traffic coming from bots, you should first and foremost verify the sources of traffic. The appearance of bots can be evidenced by clicks from unknown sources or sudden increases in visibility from a specific sector. You also need to check IP addresses to detect repetitive activity and investigate the credibility of user behavior. Analyzing server logs can help identify bots, especially if they generate large amounts of traffic. It’s also a good idea to use online traffic analysis tools and filter traffic using them. Additionally, there are specialized tools created to detect and block bots, which can be more effective at identifying subtle bots. They operate on the basis of advanced techniques, such as analysing user behaviour, analysing IP addresses, or identifying entities that browse websites in an unusual way. Methods of blocking bot traffic include CAPTCHA protection, a test that requires users to perform a specific action, such as recognizing characters or images, to confirm that they are humans and not bots. It’s also a good idea to create a robots.txt file – instructions for crawling the page for bots visiting it, so that you can designate areas that bots don’t have access to.
The key to managing bot traffic is to understand the differences between the types of bots and implement appropriate security solutions. Being vigilant is essential because, unfortunately, not all affiliates are honest. It’s also a good idea to work with a professional agency that can help you create effective affiliate campaigns.
