Combatting artificial traffic bots

While it is true that artificial intelligence has transformed how businesses operate online, it has also introduced new challenges. One of the most pressing is the rise of AI driven bots that move through websites with no real purpose or context. These bots generate inflated traffic figures and place unnecessary strain on hosting resources. They also crawl pages of little relevance, such as event calendar pages years into the past or future.

This behaviour creates a confusing data pattern that offers no value to website owners. Serversaurus continues to strengthen hosting environment security so clients can enjoy the reliability of secure web hosting without the burden of artificial traffic.

Many business owners aren’t aware of the impact bot traffic is having on their website. Due to the rapid increase of bot variety, and sheer number of bots crawling websites day to day - protection from bot traffic is no longer optional, but a requirement to ensure reliable website performance. AI driven tools are now everywhere, with some designed for scraping and data harvesting, while others operate on outdated logic that pushes them to scan obsolete content, repeat the same request for minutes at a time, or hammer a single page until server resources are consumed.

These patterns distort analytics, mislead marketing decisions, and place websites under avoidable strain. There is also a broader sustainability concern because unnecessary resource consumption is wasted energy consumption which contributes to the enormous carbon footprint of the internet. Serversaurus recognises that hosting should be responsible to the people and planet which is why a stronger solution is needed.

One of the clearest signs of this shift comes from the way bots interact with niche site features. Calendars and event archives attract them even when the dates no longer hold any relevance. Sites with community listings have reported bots crawling entries from a decade ago followed by a leap to listings years into the future. These requests serve no purpose and often appear in clusters which means servers receive sudden spikes for content rarely touched by real users.

Patterns like these highlight a key problem. Automated systems can gather information at scale, but they fail to recognise the necessary context, leading to wasteful behaviour. Behind the scenes this results in:

• Inflated visit numbers that hide genuine audience trends
• Higher resource usage across CPU, RAM and bandwidth
• More energy spent on processing traffic that adds no value

A firewall capable of interpreting these patterns in real time needs to be part of the solution, so that’s exactly what we have been developing.

Serversaurus has introduced a powerful security layer built with the LiteSpeed Web Application Firewall working in conjunction with ModSecurity. This system monitors incoming activity to identify threats in motion rather than relying on fixed assumptions. It reviews header behaviour, request methods and anomaly scores to recognise when a visitor is acting like a scanner or automated bot. It reviews each request before it reaches client applications so it can block malicious or wasteful activity at the boundary.

Sites built on platforms such as WordPress or Craft benefit immediately because scanners and automated tools have restricted access, preventing large volumes of junk traffic through the network. The firewall’s rate limiting features restrict high frequency requests while its IP reputation checks filter out known malicious sources. These features help maintain high performance web hosting for clients even as new AI tools appear on the web.

Early results show a clear reduction in illegitimate traffic patterns. Sites have reported fewer spikes in irrelevant crawler activity and more reliable analytics reporting. These changes support a stable hosting environment while reducing the environmental cost of unnecessary requests.

AI driven bots will remain part of the digital landscape, though they do not need to disrupt the way Australian businesses operate online.

Serversaurus continues to refine its approach so clients can enjoy stable websites supported by ethical practices and transparent technology. If you would like to learn how this firewall solution can support your business you can contact us for guidance.