Types of Website Bots: Classification, Bots to Block and Bots to Keep

Website bots are automated programs that visit and interact with a website without direct human action, and they fall into several groups by purpose: search engine crawlers, AI and GEO crawlers, SEO tool bots, social and preview bots, monitoring bots, scrapers, and malicious bots. Identifying each group correctly lets an administrator keep the bots that support SEO and visibility in AI answers, while blocking the bots that waste server resources or threaten security. Bots account for a large share of total web traffic, so managing them poorly can either burn infrastructure or quietly remove a site from search results and AI-generated answers.

Updated: 08/2026

• Keep: search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot) and AI/GEO crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot), because they serve SEO and GEO.
• Consider: SEO tool bots and uptime monitors, keeping only the tools the business actually uses.
• Block: aggressive scrapers such as Bytespider and malicious bots (vulnerability scanners, credential stuffing, spam, DDoS).

What is a website bot?

A website bot is software that automatically sends requests to a server and interacts with page content without a person operating it in real time. Bots can read pages, collect data, check availability, build link previews, or carry out attacks, all through scripted behavior that runs at a speed and scale far beyond an ordinary visitor.

Bots are usually split into two broad groups: good bots and bad bots. Good bots respect the rules declared in robots.txt, identify themselves honestly through their User-Agent string, and deliver a clear benefit, such as adding a page to a search index or helping a brand appear in AI answers. Bad bots hide or fake their identity, ignore robots.txt, and aim to scrape content, probe for vulnerabilities, or overload the system.

How much traffic comes from bots: real server-log data

Based on server-log data TOS observed on a live website it manages (08/2026), automated traffic made up a substantial portion of all requests. The figures below describe that single site over a 15-day window and are not an industry average; every site should measure its own logs. On that site, total traffic ran at roughly 213,000 requests per day, and a single scraper, Bytespider, generated about 428,000 requests over 15 days, around 28,000 per day, close to 13% of all requests, with virtually no referral traffic in return.

Two patterns stand out. An aggressive scraper such as Bytespider can dominate raw request volume while returning nothing of value, whereas legitimate AI crawlers from Apple, OpenAI, Anthropic and others were highly active because AI systems were fetching the content to inform their answers. Blocking the first group protects resources; blocking the second would quietly remove the site from AI answers.

Why classify and manage bots?

Classifying and managing bots matters because a bot can be an asset or a burden depending on which group it belongs to. Sound management balances three goals: saving server resources, protecting security, and keeping the bots that help a site stay visible.

On resources and speed, every bot request consumes bandwidth, CPU and server memory. Aggressive scrapers that fire large bursts of requests can slow a site down, raise infrastructure costs, and degrade the experience for real users, as the real-data table above shows.

On security, many bots are built to scan for vulnerabilities, attempt unauthorized logins, or spread spam. Detecting and blocking these early reduces the risk of intrusion and data loss.

Just as important, classification prevents blocking beneficial bots by mistake. Accidentally blocking Googlebot can drop pages out of the index and cost rankings; accidentally blocking an AI bot such as GPTBot or PerplexityBot can make a brand disappear from AI answers, losing the GEO opportunity. Managing bots is therefore not only about blocking, but about deciding whether to keep or block based on the value of each group.

Common types of website bots

The common types of website bots can be organized into seven main groups by purpose and by how beneficial or harmful they are. The table below summarizes the groups, examples, purpose, and whether to block or keep them, before each group is examined in detail.

Search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot)

Search engine crawlers are the bots that collect website content to index and rank it on search results pages. Familiar examples include Googlebot from Google, Bingbot from Bing, YandexBot from Yandex, and Baiduspider from Baidu. This is the foundational group for SEO, because a page that a crawler cannot fetch cannot appear in search results.

The general rule is to keep and enable this group, and never to block it. Crawl frequency should only be tuned through crawl-rate settings when a server is overloaded, rather than an outright block. Administrators should also make sure that robots.txt and directive tags do not accidentally stop these bots from reaching pages that need to be indexed.

AI and GEO crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot)

AI and GEO crawlers are bots operated by artificial-intelligence platforms to read website content for use in model answers. This group includes GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and OAI-SearchBot from OpenAI, ClaudeBot from Anthropic, PerplexityBot from Perplexity, Google-Extended from Google, Applebot from Apple, Meta-ExternalAgent from Meta, and CCBot from Common Crawl. As search shifts toward AI answers, keeping this group gives a brand the chance to be cited, which is the goal of GEO and AIO. See the complete list of AI bots and the priority order to know which to allow first.

It helps to separate two kinds of bot within this group. Training bots, such as GPTBot, CCBot and Google-Extended, collect content to help train models or enrich their data. Real-time answer bots, such as ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, fetch a page the moment a user asks a question, to compile an answer with citations. A business that wants to keep its content out of model training can opt out of the training bots specifically while still allowing the real-time answer bots, so it does not lose the ability to appear in AI answers. In the real-data window above, these AI crawlers were among the most active legitimate visitors on the site.

SEO tool bots (Ahrefs, Semrush)

SEO tool bots are the crawlers of SEO analytics platforms, built to collect data on backlinks, keywords, and competitor profiles. Common examples include AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, MJ12bot, and DotBot. This group does not bring search traffic directly; it serves analysis and market research.

The recommendation here depends on need: keep the bots of tools the business actively uses so their data stays current, and consider blocking the bots of tools that are not in use to reduce server load. A site that runs its own competitor tracking may want SemrushBot and AhrefsBot enabled, while a site that uses neither can block them without losing anything.

Social and link-preview bots

Social bots fetch page information to build a preview when a link is shared on a social platform or messaging app. Examples include facebookexternalhit from Facebook, Twitterbot from X, and Slackbot from Slack. They read title, description and thumbnail tags to assemble a clean preview card. This group should be kept, because blocking it strips shared links of their title, description or image and lowers the click-through rate from social channels, while posing no meaningful security risk.

Monitoring and uptime bots

Monitoring and uptime bots periodically send requests to check whether a site is still running and to measure its response time. Common services include UptimeRobot, Pingdom, and StatusCake, and they usually visit on short cycles with small, steady traffic. If a business actively uses these services, they should be kept so that alerts arrive quickly when the site has a problem; an unfamiliar monitoring bot that belongs to no service in use can be blocked to trim unnecessary traffic.

Scrapers and aggressive crawlers (Bytespider)

Scrapers are crawlers that access a site at high frequency to copy content, images, or product data, usually with no benefit to the site being scraped. A frequently cited example is Bytespider from ByteDance, alongside many scrapers that spoof their User-Agent to avoid detection. On the site TOS measured, Bytespider alone produced about 428,000 requests in 15 days, close to 13% of all requests, while sending virtually no visitors in return.

The recommendation for this group is to block it, especially when it places a heavy load on the server. The exact share of any given scraper should be observed in each site’s own logs rather than assumed. When blocking, it is best to combine several layers of defense, because scrapers frequently rotate their User-Agent and IP address to slip past filters.

Malicious bots

Malicious bots are programmed to attack a site or profit from it. This group covers vulnerability scanners, brute-force and credential-stuffing bots, comment and form spam bots, and bots that take part in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. They bring no value and directly threaten the security and stability of the system. The recommendation is to block them decisively with every available measure, from a web application firewall to rate limiting and IP block lists. This is the one group where blocking carries no trade-off for SEO or GEO.

Which bots to block and which to keep

The core principle when deciding whether to keep or block is simple: never block search engine crawlers or the AI bots that serve GEO, block aggressive scrapers and malicious bots decisively, and weigh SEO tool and monitoring bots against actual usage. The decision table below summarizes each group.

The key point to remember is that blocking bots is not always safe: an overzealous block can erase a site from both traditional search results and AI answers. The block list should be reviewed regularly, and priority should always go to protecting the bots that deliver visibility, namely search engine crawlers and AI/GEO crawlers.

How to manage and block bots effectively

Effective bot management requires combining several layers rather than relying on a single technique, because each method solves only part of the problem. The options below run from soft declaration to hard blocking.

Declaring rules with robots.txt

Robots.txt is a file that tells bots which areas they may or may not crawl. It is a useful tool for regulating reputable bots, for example disallowing an admin directory or configuring the Google-Extended token to opt content out of AI training. However, robots.txt is voluntary: bad bots can ignore it entirely, so it is not a measure for stopping scrapers or malicious bots.

User-Agent blocking at the web server or WAF

Blocking by User-Agent at a web server such as Nginx or Apache, or at a web application firewall (WAF) and platforms like Cloudflare, allows a site to refuse bots that declare an unwanted identity. This stops many scrapers that use a fixed User-Agent. Its limitation is that a User-Agent can be spoofed, so relying on this signal alone is not enough against bots that deliberately hide their identity.

Rate limiting

Rate limiting caps the number of requests that one IP address or source may send within a time window. It is especially effective against aggressive scrapers and brute-force bots, because it curbs bursts of requests without needing to know the bot’s exact identity, and it protects server performance even when the User-Agent is spoofed.

Verifying real bots with reverse DNS

Because a User-Agent is easy to fake, verifying a real bot should rely on reverse DNS combined with a forward lookup to match the IP address against the provider’s official domain. A request claiming to be Googlebot is only trustworthy when its IP resolves back to a Google domain, and many major bot providers also publish official IP ranges for matching. This verification separates genuine bots from impostors, preventing beneficial bots from being blocked by mistake while blocking the fakes correctly.

Meta robots and X-Robots-Tag

The meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header control whether a page is indexed or its links are followed. These are not access-blocking tools; they steer the indexing behavior of compliant bots. They are useful for keeping pages that do not need to appear in search results out of the index, without affecting a bot’s ability to read the page.

In summary, blocking by User-Agent alone is not enough, because that identity can be spoofed. A durable strategy combines identity verification through reverse DNS, rate limiting, and a web application firewall, while regularly monitoring server logs and Search Console for early signs that search engine crawlers are having trouble reaching the site.

Common bot-management mistakes

Many visibility and performance incidents trace back to a handful of common mistakes in how bots are managed. Recognizing these errors in advance helps avoid costly consequences for SEO and GEO.

• Blocking Googlebot or AI bots by mistake: accidentally blocking a search engine crawler drops pages from the index, while accidentally blocking an AI bot loses the chance to appear in AI answers.
• Relying on User-Agent alone: trusting the User-Agent string fully both lets spoofed bots through and makes it easy to block real bots when the rules are configured imprecisely.
• Misconfiguring robots.txt: a single misplaced Disallow line can block directories that hold important content, leaving them uncrawled and unindexed.
• Not monitoring server logs: skipping log review means an administrator never spots an aggressive scraper or unfamiliar bot consuming resources.
• Not applying rate limiting: without a request cap, a server is easily overloaded by a scraper or a burst-heavy attack.

Conclusion

Understanding the types of website bots is the first step toward managing automated traffic deliberately, rather than blocking or allowing it on instinct. The seven common groups each call for a different response. The consistent principle is to keep the group that delivers visibility in search and AI answers, block aggressive scrapers and malicious bots decisively, and weigh the tool groups against real usage. Because a bot’s identity can be spoofed, management should combine several layers: robots.txt declarations, blocking at the web server or WAF, rate limiting, reverse-DNS verification, and regular log monitoring. This layered approach protects resources and security while preserving the full SEO and GEO opportunity for a site.

Frequently asked questions

Should AI bots such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot be blocked?

In most cases, AI bots that help brand visibility, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, should not be blocked. These bots help content get cited in AI-engine answers, which is the foundation of GEO. A business that wants to protect its content from being used to train models can block the training bots specifically while still keeping the real-time answer bots.

Is robots.txt enough to block bots?

No. Robots.txt is only a voluntary declaration that reputable bots such as Googlebot and Bingbot obey, while bad bots can ignore it completely. To truly stop aggressive scrapers and malicious bots, it needs to be combined with blocking at the web server or a web application firewall (WAF), rate limiting, and bot-identity verification. Robots.txt is suited to regulating good bots, not to stopping bots that intend to break the rules.

How can real bots be told apart from fake ones?

The most reliable method is verification through reverse DNS rather than trusting the User-Agent string, because a User-Agent is easy to fake. For Googlebot, an IP address can be resolved back to a Google domain and then forward-resolved again to confirm the match. Many large bot providers also publish official IP ranges for comparison. If a request claims to be Googlebot but its IP does not belong to Google, it is a fake bot.

Does blocking Bytespider hurt SEO?

Blocking Bytespider generally does not hurt rankings on Google, because it is a ByteDance bot, not a search engine crawler that a site relies on to be indexed. Bytespider mainly scrapes data and can consume a large amount of server resources without sending any traffic; on the site TOS measured, it produced close to 13% of all requests with virtually no referrals. The care needed is to distinguish Bytespider clearly from search engine and useful AI bots, to avoid blocking the wrong ones and losing an SEO or GEO opportunity.

What share of website traffic is bots?

Bots account for a large portion of total traffic on many websites, sometimes matching or exceeding traffic from real users. Based on server-log data TOS observed on a live website it manages (08/2026), total traffic ran at roughly 213,000 requests per day, and one scraper, Bytespider, alone made up about 13% of all requests. The exact share varies by site, industry and time, so it should be measured directly on each site’s own server logs rather than assumed from a fixed figure.

Manage bots and optimize SEO and GEO with TOS

Managing bots well is one piece of the wider technical SEO and GEO picture, where keeping the right beneficial bots and blocking the harmful ones shapes both performance and visibility. TOS – Premium SEO Performance provides a bot and crawler audit combined with SEO and GEO optimization, so a website stays both secure and well represented across search results and AI answers. Businesses can get in touch with the TOS team to review the current state of their site and map out a suitable plan.

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