{"id":312482,"date":"2025-08-02T17:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312482\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:43:13","slug":"automated-bots-surpass-50-of-global-internet-traffic-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312482\/","title":{"rendered":"Automated Bots Surpass 50% of Global Internet Traffic for the First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2024, <strong>automated bots exceeded 50\u202fpercent of global internet traffic<\/strong> for the first time, according to the <strong>2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report<\/strong>. The shift was driven by advances in AI and large language models that enable both benign and malicious bots to scale rapidly<\/p>\n<p>Why Bots Have Taken Over the Web<\/p>\n<p>AI tools like ChatGPT, ByteSpider, ClaudeBot, and others have significantly lowered the technical barriers for creating bots. This has led to an explosion in automation, where even non-technical users can deploy malicious bots at scale <\/p>\n<p>Breaking Down the Traffic<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>51%<\/strong> of all web traffic in 2024 came from automated bots\u2014surpassing human traffic for the first time in over a decade<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bad bots<\/strong> (used for fraud, scraping, credential stuffing, and attacks) accounted for <strong>37%<\/strong> of all traffic\u2014up from 32% in 2023<\/li>\n<li><strong>Good bots<\/strong>\u2014such as search engine crawlers and monitoring tools\u2014made up the remainder and help index sites or monitor uptime <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Industries Most Impacted<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Travel<\/strong> experienced the highest share of bad bot activity at 27% of all bot attacks in 2024, increasing from 21% in 2023 <\/li>\n<li><strong>Retail<\/strong> was similarly hit hard, with malicious bot traffic comprising about 59% of overall traffic in that sector<\/li>\n<li>Other sectors like <strong>financial services, e\u2011commerce<\/strong>, and <strong>healthcare<\/strong> have been targeted with rising frequency, especially via API abuse and account takeover exploits<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Emerging Challenges &amp; Risks<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Bots now use <strong>advanced evasion tactics<\/strong>, including mimicking human behavior, masking as mobile user agents, and leveraging residential IPs to bypass typical defenses like CAPTCHAs <\/li>\n<li>A substantial <strong>44% of advanced bot traffic<\/strong> is directed at APIs, aiming to exploit business logic and gain unauthorized access or steal data <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What This Means &amp; What Comes Next<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The milestone of <strong>more bot than human traffic<\/strong> marks a turning point\u2014web infrastructure and security must evolve rapidly to meet this challenge. Traditional defenses are no longer sufficient<\/li>\n<li>Many experts worry about the <strong>\u201cdead internet\u201d scenario<\/strong>, where synthetic or bot-generated content overwhelms authenticity and degrades trust in online content and interactions <\/li>\n<li>Innovations such as Cloudflare\u2019s <strong>AI Labyrinth<\/strong>, which uses deceptive web pages to trap scraping bots, are emerging to help defend digital ecosystems<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Conclusion<\/p>\n<p>By mid-2025, <strong>automated bots now generate over 50%<\/strong> of global web traffic, with <strong>bad bots alone comprising 37%<\/strong>. AI-driven automation is fueling this transformation\u2014and organizations must adopt advanced bot management and API protection solutions to defend infrastructure and uphold the integrity of the online ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, automated bots exceeded 50\u202fpercent of global internet traffic for the first time, according to the 2025&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3161],"tags":[3082,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-312482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114960413879295174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}