Managing Bot Traffic: Securing and Optimising Your Website

Imagine you’re at a huge, vibrant music festival—only, this isn't just any festival. The guests are a mix of human users and bots. Just like at any festival, you've got your die-hard fans (human visitors) who are there for the main event, and then there are those who you're not quite sure about—like bots. Some of these bots are like the professional photographers and reviewers, essential for spreading the word about the fest. Others, however, are more like gatecrashers; they sneak in, push the capacity to the limits, and don’t really contribute to the vibe.

In our previous piece on Understanding Resource Usage, we likened a hosting server to a sprawling festival where each visitor, whether human or bot, consumes valuable resources your hosting account has available. Now, let’s zoom in on those mysterious guests—bots—and figure out how to manage them so they don’t drain the energy from your actual audience.

Why Single Out Bots?

Bots can be more than just a background presence on your website; they can actively impact its performance. Like a crowd that grows too large for a venue, bots can overwhelm your server by accessing pages at a rate far beyond what you'd expect from typical human visitors. This rapid access can lead to several issues:

• Server Overload: Some bots might hit your website with requests so frequently that your server struggles to keep up, slowing down the performance for everyone else.
• Resource Drain: Bots consume the same resources that human visitors do—CPU, memory, and bandwidth. If they're hitting your site non-stop, they can deplete these resources quickly, leading to sluggish page loads or even timeouts.
• Potential Shutdowns: In extreme cases, if the bot traffic is heavy enough, it can completely overwhelm the server's capacity, leading to downtime or crashes—essentially shutting down the show.

Bots can slow down performances (web pages), and in worst cases, shut down the show (your website). Here’s how you can manage them smartly:

1. Gatekeeping with Robots.txt: Directing the Digital Crowd

The robots.txt file acts like the rules and regulations posted at the entrance of our digital festival—it tells bots which parts of your site they can visit and which they should avoid. It can also tell them how quickly they should index your site. Here’s how robots.txt can help manage bot activity:

• Directing Bot Traffic: You can specify which directories or pages bots are allowed to access. This is akin to designating which areas of the festival are open to all guests and which are VIP only.
• Crawl Delay: For bots that observe this rule, you can set a crawl delay to control how frequently they can request pages from your site. This helps in managing the load on your resources, similar to scheduling entry times to prevent all guests from arriving simultaneously.

However, there are significant limitations to relying solely on robots.txt:

• Compliance is Voluntary: Not all bots follow the rules set in robots.txt. Malicious bots looking to scrape your site or perform harmful actions often ignore this file entirely, akin to unruly festival-goers who jump fences or ignore entry guidelines.
• Google's Non-adherence to Crawl-Delay: Major crawlers like Googlebot do not acknowledge the crawl-delay directive. They use their own algorithms to determine crawl rates, which can still lead to high server load. However, you can manage Google's crawl rate through Google Search Console, where you can request slower crawling during peak hours to lessen the impact on your server.

While robots.txt provides a first layer of control, its effectiveness is limited by the willingness of bots to follow the rules.

2. Frontline Defences: Imunify360 and Web Shield

On Kualo’s shared hosting, your website is protected by Imunify360, equipping you with highly effective bot security without extra charges.

Imagine Imunify360 as your festival’s most vigilant bouncers stationed at every entrance. Not just ordinary gatekeepers, they're equipped with advanced technology to scan every visitor—or in your website’s case, every incoming traffic request—meticulously. Imunify360 serves as your primary defence against bots, with key features that include:

• Advanced Detection: Uses sophisticated algorithms to analyse incoming traffic in real-time, distinguishing between harmful and benign bots. This is akin to bouncers who expertly spot a fake ID or unauthorised entry.
• Automatic Blocking: Once a malicious bot is identified, it actively prevents it from accessing your site, stopping potential harm before it starts—much like a bouncer who turns away troublemakers at the door.
• Continual Monitoring: Continuously watches over your site to react swiftly to new threats, ensuring ongoing peace and security as if bouncers are patrolling the venue during the event.
• Web Shield: Acts as an additional checkpoint by intercepting and examining HTTP/HTTPS requests before they reach your site. This layer filters out malicious traffic efficiently, ensuring only legitimate requests use your resources—similar to advanced scanners at entry points checking for prohibited items.

3. Extending the Perimeter: Advanced Bot Management with CloudFlare

If bots continue to be a concern even with Imunify360, CloudFlare offers enhanced protection layers. While Imunify360 secures inside the venue, CloudFlare acts like the high-tech surveillance around the perimeter:

• Extended Bot Management: CloudFlare’s bot management capabilities are more comprehensive, using global data and machine learning to distinguish effectively between beneficial and harmful bots.
• Special Handling for Known Crawlers: It treats known crawlers like Googlebot with care, allowing them to index the site without hampering your security measures. CloudFlare can serve these crawlers cached content, significantly reducing resource consumption as detailed in this CloudFlare blog post.
• Bot Fight Modes: For aggressive bot mitigation, CloudFlare offers "Bot Fight Mode" in its free plan and "Super Bot Fight Mode" in paid plans, targeting and mitigating sophisticated bots as discussed in CloudFlare’s detailed explanation.

Combining Imunify360's robust internal security with CloudFlare’s expansive capabilities ensures your website withstands bot-related challenges efficiently. Together, they fortify your digital presence, allowing you to manage genuine user traffic and enhance visitor experiences without interruptions from unwanted digital crowds.

4. Caching for Control: Reducing Bot Impact Efficiently

Caching serves as a powerful tool in managing bot traffic by storing a version of your web pages in a readily accessible format for fast and efficient delivery. Here’s how caching, especially with solutions like LiteSpeed Cache, can significantly reduce the impact of bot traffic:

• Immediate Response: LiteSpeed Cache stores static versions of your dynamic web pages. When bots (or human visitors) request these pages, they receive the cached version, which loads significantly faster than generating the page from scratch each time. 
• Reduced Server Load: By serving cached pages, your server bypasses the resource-intensive process of dynamically generating each page upon every request. This dramatically reduces CPU and memory usage, which is crucial when bots make frequent requests. 
• Cache Warmer: Some caching solutions, including LiteSpeed Cache, come with a cache warmer feature. This pre-loads the cache after changes to your site, ensuring that the cached version is ready before any bot or user requests it.
• Protection Against Good and Bad Bots: Even well-meaning bots can strain your resources. Caching ensures that whether a bot is scraping your content legitimately or not, the impact on your server's performance is minimised. For malicious bots, this means less damage, and for good bots, like those from search engines, this means faster access without compromising your site's functionality.

Caching is a key strategy in maintaining optimal performance and availability, particularly effective in environments susceptible to high bot traffic. While it does not prevent bots from visiting your site, it ensures that their visits do not degrade the experience for actual human visitors or overburden your hosting resources.

By combining these strategies—robust security defenses with Imunify360, advanced bot management with CloudFlare, strategic use of robots.txt, and efficient caching—you can ensure that your website remains secure, fast, and accessible, even in the face of diverse bot traffic.