Basically, when we think of the internet or web, we usually assume that the person on the other end of a power button. However, our assumption is wrong, as over half of the world’s internet traffic isn’t coming from humans.
Over Half Of The World’s Internet Traffic Isn’t Coming From Humans
Despite being supported by machines, the Internet was created by men and for men, but more and more this virtual space is populated by machines, designed to address all the tasks that users want to automate and simplify.
The use of these machines on the Internet is already so great that there are more bots than humans to navigate in the large virtual information network.
The bots have their space on the Internet and a very specific utility. They deal with processes and functions that humans prefer to automate or want to delegate.
A study presented by Imperva Incapsula goes to show that, for several years, bots have taken over the Internet and are longer than humans to browse sites and collect information. This assertion results from the evaluation of more than 16.7 billion visits to 100,000 sites of the Incapsula network, randomly selected.
After 2015 showed a decrease in bot traffic, 2016 showed a reverse trend and brought, once again, a growth in traffic from these automatic mechanisms. The 50% barrier was broken again, putting the use of the Internet by humans in the background.
In the field of bots, there are also changes. Despite their overall growth, the number of malignant bots has dropped to the lowest value since this monitoring is done.
Good Bots, Bad Bots and their function on the Internet
As automatic mechanisms, bots can be used for beneficial tasks or the opposite. Most of them are dedicated to collecting or sharing information, managing to simulate site visits. In the case of malicious bots, they are often used to spread spam or to generate traffic on websites and to mislead.
These bots are estimated to cost advertisers $7 billion annually on advertising fraud alone. On the Internet that is open and with more and more information, these bots are pulling themselves more traffic, surpassing who else should use them, humans.
