The Bot Detection feature ensures your website traffic is genuine and your marketing resources are effectively used. Proper setup and regular reporting help maintain traffic integrity and optimize performance.
The Bot Detection feature is designed to help you analyze and identify non-human traffic on your websites. This feature allows you to generate detailed reports that distinguish between probable bot sources, known bot sources, and live sources, providing insights that can optimize site performance and ad spend.
Setting Up Bot Detection
Before generating reports, ensure the Bot Detection feature is properly configured.
1. Accessing the Bot Detection Settings
- Log in to your Orbee Platform account.
- Navigate to the Bot Detection Dashboard Orbee Platform > Dynamic Reports > Dashboards > Automated Web Traffic and Location Analysis
Note: When choosing your date range, it's best to limit it to a maximum of one month. Due to the large amount of data involved, longer periods may cause the report to take a long time to generate or even fail to run.
2. Configuring Exclusions
- Exclude Specific Campaigns:
- If you want to exclude certain campaigns from the bot detection analysis (e.g., campaigns run by Orbee), add these campaigns to the exclusion list under the Campaign Exclusions tab.
3. Save and Test the Configuration
- Save your settings and run a test by monitoring traffic for a short period to ensure the parameters are working as expected.
- Adjust settings as necessary to refine bot detection accuracy.
Recommendations for Implementation
Blocking High-Volume Bot IPs:
Blacklist the most active IP addresses contributing to bot traffic. For example, blocking IPs from Ontario could potentially reduce bot traffic by up to 70%.
Monitor Regularly:
Regularly review the bot detection reports to stay ahead of new bot traffic patterns and adjust your strategies as necessary.
Focus on Real Traffic:
Prioritize optimizing campaigns for the states that bring in quality traffic, filtering out less productive regions identified as bot sources.
Generating a Bot Detection Report
Once your Bot Detection settings are configured, follow these steps to generate a report:
1. Access the Bot Detection Tool
Navigate to the Bot Detection section within your Orbee dashboard.
2. Generate the Report
Use Account ID to generate reports
3. Review the IP List
The report will include a list of IP addresses identified as bots. You can review this list to understand the origin of bot traffic and consider implementing a blacklist to block these IPs if needed.
Interpreting the Report
After generating the report, here's how you can interpret the data:
Traffic Distribution
The report divides traffic into In-state, Out-of-state, and No Location Data categories. This helps you determine which states contribute to real traffic and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Bot Traffic Insights
Analyze the source distribution to identify where bot traffic originates. For instance, in the case of `dealerdomain.com`, a significant portion of bot traffic came from Ontario, Canada. Blocking these IPs could significantly reduce non-productive traffic.
Campaign Performance
The report indicates that bot traffic primarily arrives directly via the site’s URL, with some coming from Google/CPCand remarketing ads. Fortunately, this does not seem to impact your ad costs.