Strategies for AI Bots

We'll craft a strategy to handle bot traffic without losing AI benefits.

“Internet bots have officially surpassed human traffic. In 2025, automated traffic grew 8 times faster than human activity.”

Source: CNBC / HUMAN Security

Bots are consuming your server's performance

• Speed Fluctuations Outside Peak Human Traffic
  Website speed declines without matching analytics traffic. The culprit? Bot activity.
• Aggressive AI Bots Ignore Rules
  We've never seen bots this aggressive. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Meta, and others crawl without regard for your rules.
• Standard Hosting Isn't Enough
  Typical hosting solutions can't keep up. Bots are crafty, sending hundreds of thousands of requests daily.
• Unaware of AI Bot Traffic
  Without analyzing access logs and server traffic, you can't tell how many requests are from bots versus humans.

Sometimes a few rules are enough to get the server running smoothly and customers back online.

A slower website for users means worse business for you.

An overloaded server slows down real user speed. You see the impact on metrics, but not bot traffic.

• Higher Server Load = Slower Website
  Slower server response worsens Core Web Vitals, leading to lower Google rankings and conversions.
• Unexplained Fluctuations and Slowdowns
  No new deployments or ads, yet the server is slower? This often indicates AI bot traffic.
• Seasonal Instability
  Bot traffic combines with real peaks like Black Friday or other campaigns. We've seen servers crash under this double load.

“Bots are the new reality of the web. Thanks to our collaboration with PageSpeed.ONE, we block over 600,000 bot queries daily across all ten language versions of the Balistas e-shop. By properly configuring Cloudflare, we immediately reduced server load by 40% without compromising brand visibility.”

Marek Adamkovič, Partner & CMO at BALISTAS.

Solutions? Strategy, not blanket blocking

The goal isn't to block AI bots entirely. It's about having control—knowing who's coming, deciding who to allow, limit, or block. And doing it consistently.

• Robots.txt Isn’t Enough
  AI bots often ignore rules. Strategy must start at the CDN layer.
• CDN and Security Settings
  Rate limiting, WAF, bot modes, cache rules. Rest assured, we keep it simple.
• Specific Recommendations
  Our analysis reveals who to block, limit, or keep, and exactly what and where to configure.