Skip to main content

Report says 20% of all 2018 web traffic came from bad bots

Not all bots are bad, but there are definitely more of the harmful ones that we thought.

According to The Next Web, software company Distil Networks published its annual Bad Bot Report this week. Its findings regarding the current state of bots were interesting, to say the least.

This year’s Bad Bot Report broke down the sources of all web traffic in 2018. While it probably wasn’t surprising that bots (good and bad) had accounted for 37.9% of all web traffic last year, it is a bit startling to know that the traffic from bad bots had outpaced the good bots by just under 3%. Overall, bad bots had accounted for 20% of all web traffic last year

While bad bots managed to still outperform good bots last year, it’s still worth noting that overall, bots, in general, experienced a decrease in traffic and human traffic actually increased. Good and bad bots experienced reductions in traffic by 14.4% and 6.4%, respectively. Web traffic from humans has increased by 7.5% to reach a total of 62.1%.

The 2019 Bad Bot Report also broke down the main sources of bad bots. Notably, the report states that while Russia is the most blocked country for being suspected as an origin of bad bots, the United States is the No. 1 source of bad bot traffic at 53.4%. Russia’s traffic percentage doesn’t even make Distil’s list of the top five countries responsible for bad bot traffic, but Russia is the most blocked country at 32.6%. The U.S. was the fifth most blocked country at 6.6%.

According to the report, bad bots are labeled as such because they essentially steal data from websites with the intent to either “gain a competitive edge” or do worse things like commit fraud and theft. The top five industries to be affected by bad bot traffic were: Financial, ticketing, education, IT and services, and marketing and advertising. The financial industry was the hardest hit as 42.2% of its traffic had come from bad bots. The report went on to note that the financial industry mostly suffered “from bad bots attempting to access user accounts.” Among the industries noted by the report, the education sector seemed particularly unusual. However, the education industry experienced bad bots as 37.9% of its overall traffic and apparently the bad bots deployed in this industry usually search “for research papers, class availability, and to access user accounts.”

Though their traffic has reduced, bad bots truly are everywhere. Many of them are even impersonating your favorite browsers and online retailers: 49.9% of bad bots impersonate the Chrome browser and 18% of them have used an Amazon ISP.

Editors' Recommendations

Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
Best OLED monitor deals: Get an OLED screen from just $450
Marvel's Spider-Man running on the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8.

Shopping some of the best monitor deals is a good way to save on some extra screen real estate, but if you’re looking for something that can produce a stunning image you should turn your shopping cart toward the OLED monitors. OLED is one of the best picture technologies currently available, and it can create a lifelike image that makes interacting with games, presentations, and creative work much more immersive. The best OLED monitors can run pretty expensive, but that’s what OLED monitor deals are for. If you’re looking for superior picture quality and some ways to save, read onward for more details on the best OLED monitor deals taking place right now.
ViewSonic 15.6-inch VX1655 4K OLED portable monitor — $450, was $500

Getting into the OLED game can be both affordable and portable with the ViewSonic VX1655. It’s a 4K OLED display that’s made to function as either a laptop extension or something to pair with a tablet. It comes in at a super sharp 4K resolution and a refresh rate of 60Hz. This isn’t something you’d want to pair with a gaming PC, but it’s a great little display to keep with you if you do creative work on the run or want some extra screen real estate while working on a tablet at your desk.

Read more
Best monitor deals: Gaming, office, curved, OLED and more
Dell UltraSharp 27 4K PremierColor Monitor

Whether you prefer to work at one of the best desktop computers, the best laptops, or anything in between, an external monitor can be helpful to add some extra screen real estate. One of the best monitors can even go a long way toward reducing eye strain and creating an immersive digital or gaming experience. While high end monitors can get quite expensive, there are always some impressive monitor deals to shop, and we’ve tracked them all down. Reading onward you’ll find what we feel are the best monitor deals, whether you’re shopping for 4K monitors, gaming monitors, ultrawide monitors, or more general monitors meant for all-purpose users.
Best monitor deals

The following deals represent a best-of of the deals below. They're selected to give a mixture of prices, styles, and levels of discount. If you don't see something you like, don't worry, as the following sections will have plenty more deals for you to choose from. However, this is a highly recommended place to start:

Read more
7 best Chromebooks for 2024: the best for every budget
Close up of the Chrome logo on the top of a Chromebook.

Chromebooks might have a hard time competing with Windows laptops and MacBooks, but that doesn't mean they don't have their place. We've reviewed hundreds of laptops over the years, testing for important qualities like performance, battery life, and display quality — and we've found that Chromebooks consistently excel at performance and reliability.

You can find Chromebooks from Google, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and many others, and we've dug through them to put together this roundup of the best Chromebooks on the market. They're incredibly accessible devices, and for the right person, a Chromebook can be the best laptop in terms of value.

Read more