How to protect your site from unwanted traffic

Ever feel like your website’s getting more attention than that one person who brought an umbrella to work on a rainy day? That’s AI bots for you.

In 2025, AI-driven bots are scraping, spamming, and slowing down websites more than ever. But why should small businesses like yours care? These bots can drain resources, impact site performance, and even rack up running costs – and if left unchecked, they can seriously affect your website’s bottom line.

Too many bots

AI bot traffic has surged in 2025 – and there are a few key reasons why. For starters, AI-driven content scraping has become more sophisticated, with bots tirelessly scouring the web for data to feed hungry machine learning models.At the same time, spammers and hackers are deploying bots for malicious purposes – like data theft and malware infection.

Even legitimate sources – such as search engines and automation tools – contribute to bot traffic. While these “good” bots aim to index your site or assist with SEO, too much of a good thing can be a problem. In fact, recent data suggests that bots now account for nearly half of all internet traffic.

The impact on websites like yours

For business owners, the rise in bot traffic can cause several headaches. One of the biggest issues is slower site speeds. Bots crawling your site in large volumes can overload your server, leading to delays that frustrate *actual* customers and hurt your search rankings.

With bot traffic increasing bandwidth usage and eating into your resources, your hosting costs can easily creep up. Malicious bots can also expose security vulnerabilities, probing your site for weaknesses and potentially leading to data breaches or cyber attacks. If you’re not actively managing bot traffic, your website could be running inefficiently – and worse still, you could be at greater risk than you realise.

How to spot unwanted bot traffic

If you’ve noticed unusual activity on your site, it’s worth checking if bots are to blame. Here are three tell-tale signs:

A sudden spike in traffic without any corresponding increase in sales or user engagement is a red flag.
High server resource usage can also indicate bot interference – especially if your site is slowing down despite no real uptick in customer visits.
Unusual patterns in your analytics – like traffic from unexpected locations or visits at odd hours – are another telltale sign.

Google Analytics can help you diagnose bot activity, allowing you to check for abnormal traffic sources and review server logs for repetitive or high-frequency requests.

Protecting your website from unwanted bots

The good news is that there are effective ways to defend your website from bad bots:

Web Application Firewall (WAF): A WAF can help filter out malicious traffic before it reaches your site.
Block bad bots: You can also take a more hands-on approach by blocking bad bots in your .htaccess file.
Verify visitors: Another useful tool is CAPTCHA (or similar methods) – if visitors can’t prove they’re human, they probably aren’t.

Partnering with a reputable web hosting provider can make managing bots that bit easier. A good host will offer built-in security tools to help you manage bot traffic, protecting your site from unwanted and unnecessary disruptions.

Not all bots…

As we highlighted above, it’s important to remember that not all bots are bad. Some bots actually benefit your website. Search engine bots, for example, index your site so that it can appear in Google’s search results, while AI-driven automation tools can improve SEO and site functionality.

The challenge is allowing the good bots to do their job while keeping the bad ones at bay. Bot management tools can help differentiate between helpful and harmful bots, but if you’d rather leave it to the experts, partnering with a hosting provider that offers bot protection services (*cough* like Fasthosts *cough*) is a smart move.

Keep your website safe (and speedy)

AI bot traffic will no doubt continue to rise, and businesses of all sizes need to take action to protect their websites. Spotting the signs of bot interference early on can help prevent performance issues and unnecessary costs.

With the support of an experienced web hosting provider, you can block harmful bots while allowing useful ones to access your site.

Keeping your website secure, fast, and efficient calls for careful observation – fortunately for you, we’re up to the task. Want hosting that stops bots in their digital tracks? Give us a call on 0800 0612 153.