Every day, your website receives visitors that are not human.

This isn’t new – and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Google, for example, uses bots to read and index web pages. Those bots are helpful. But not all of them are.

What is a bot?

A bot (short for “robot”) is a program that automatically performs actions on the internet – opening pages, submitting forms, clicking links – with no human behind it.

According to recent data, approximately 50% of all global web traffic comes from bots. And of those, 66% are malicious.

What types of malicious bots are there?

• Scrapers: “Steal” content, prices, or data from your website for use by competitors or third parties.
• Credential stuffing bots: Test username/password combinations to gain unauthorized access to accounts.
• DDoS bots: Flood your website with fake requests until it crashes.
• Spam bots: Fill out your contact forms with unwanted content.
• Click fraud bots: Click on your ads, draining your budget with zero real results.

What does this mean for an SME?

Many small business owners believe they’re “not worth targeting.” The reality is different: 43% of cyberattacks globally target SMEs. The reason is straightforward – large companies have stronger defenses. Smaller ones are easier targets.

You don’t need to hold sensitive data or run a large e-shop to become a victim. All you need is a website.

How does this affect you directly?

Malicious bots can:

• Slow down your website, hurting your Google rankings and user experience
• Increase your hosting costs through higher resource consumption
• Steal content you’ve invested time and money to create
• Distort your analytics – leading you to make marketing decisions based on faulty data

The good news?

There are solutions that filter this malicious traffic before it ever reaches your server. And they don’t require technical expertise or a large budget.

Protogramma offers and supports Blackwall – one of the world’s leading bot protection platforms, already protecting more than 2.3 million websites. If you’d like to find out how it can protect yours, let’s talk.

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