Introduction

Internet bots, also known as Web robots or simply bots, are Web crawlers that scan your website. This bot activity may cause click numbers and click-through rates that do not reflect the true performance of your site. As a result, your click counts may be inflated artificially.

Use the reports available in the Reporting Interface to identify, investigate, and filter out bot activity.

Identify

Access the Reporting Interface then follow these steps to identify bot activity:

1. Click Choose Report and select a standard or saved report. You can also build a new report.
2. Click Add and Remove Columns and select Device:

   

3. Click Apply, then click View Report to load the report.
4. Look for a value of Robot in the Device column. This indicates bot activity.

Investigate

To further investigate bot activity, you can add a column that displays the IP address for the clicks:

1. Click Add and Remove Columns and select Click IP Address:

   

2. Click Apply, then click View Report to reload the report.

Filter Out

If you have identified the presence of bot activity, you can filter it out of the report:

1. Click Add Filter.
2. Select Device from the filters list, does not equal from the qualifiers list, and enter Robot as the value:

   

3. Click Apply Filter, then click View Report to reload the report.

This allows you to view how your program is truly performing.