{"id":74066,"date":"2025-07-07T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dhblog.dream.press\/blog\/?p=74066"},"modified":"2025-10-01T08:52:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T15:52:42","slug":"bot-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www-dev.dreamhost.com\/blog\/bot-traffic\/","title":{"rendered":"Bot Traffic Is on the Rise: Is Your Website Prepared?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For every human visiting your website, there are 3 bots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprised? We were too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But according to our internal data, we saw an average of 71.5% bot traffic since January 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI crawlers from ChatGPT (9.16%), Claude (6.09%), and other LLMs show up regularly in our bot traffic data, while search engine bots like Googlebot represent just 7.57% of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can\u2019t just block them all because most bots are necessary. For instance, Googlebot helps your site show up in search, or ChatGPT bot cites your brand as a source in responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you\u2019re seeing traffic spikes or spam entries in your contact forms, that\u2019s when you need to take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just How Bad Has the Bot Traffic Surge Become?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here is a breakdown of the bot traffic we are seeing across our customer websites on the DreamHost network:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bar<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The geographic patterns we observed are quite interesting, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ireland leads bot traffic at 40.70% of daily visits<\/strong>, followed by Singapore at 13.04%. This geographic concentration is not just coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ireland hosts the European headquarters of almost every major US tech company \u2013 Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook \u2013 drawn by EU access, low corporate taxes, and an English-speaking workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Singapore is the Asia-Pacific data center hub, with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud operating major facilities there to serve Asian markets with lower latency. When AI crawlers and cloud services scan websites, they’re often operating from server farms concentrated in these two strategic locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our findings are quite coherent with Imperva\u2019s Bad Bot Report 2025<\/a>, where 51% of all internet traffic now comes from automated sources, with 37% classified as malicious bots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge lies in the gray area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some AI training crawlers (like GPTBot) collect your content to train language models without providing direct traffic benefits back to your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But whether these represent “good” or “bad” bots depends on how you feel about AI companies using your content for commercial purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Bots vs. Bad Bots: What\u2019s the Difference<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Donut<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not all automated traffic deserves blocking. You need to know which bots help your business and which ones harm it before you take any action to manage bots on your website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Bots That Benefit Your Site<\/h3>\n\n\n\n