Suspected Bot Activity Report
The Suspected Bot Activity Report in the Customer Analytics section highlights irregular traffic and guest activity that might be attributed to bot activity. The report includes focused data on cart, event, and bounce bots. Use it to better understand regular and irregular site traffic, and identify suspicious trends.
When you use the report, take the following into account:
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The report highlights activity that we suspect is bot activity, based on various calculations as explained in the following topics. However, some legitimate guests might be falsely identified as bots, while actual bots might not be detected by the report.
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Only visitor sessions can be classified as suspected bot sessions. Customer sessions are not classified as suspected bots.
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Bots are not necessarily malicious - they are scraping your site for information. However, when analyzing your site traffic, it is always important to understand the percentage that might be attributed to bot activity, as well as identify bot activity that might be harmful to your business.
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As with other dashboard analytics, typical site behavior can greatly vary from one site to another. When you use the bot report, remember other factors that might influence your site traffic, such as ads or email campaigns, seasonal data, and so on.
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The report might take a while to load (usually, around 1 minute).
You can use the filters in the Suspected Bot Activity Report to select the time frame to display data for. By default, the report shows data from the the previous month.
The exact dates and times used for the data currently displayed are indicated as Viewing data for [start date and time] - [end date and time], based on your organization's time zone.
To update the Suspected Bot Activity Report based on your selected filters, click Apply. To revert to the default view, click Reset filters.
The data in the Suspected Bot Activity Report is refreshed every 24 hours. To download the report as a ZIP archive containing CSV files, click the Download 
icon.
Suspected bot traffic reports
The first part of the Suspected Bot Activity Report provides various traffic metrics for context when investigating bot activity.
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New Visitors from Current Complete Month - shows the total number of unique visitors over the most recent complete calendar month. The (green/red) number beside an (up/down) arrow indicates the trend in visitor count. This provides context for understanding the percentage of bot activity.
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Bounce Rate % for Current Complete Month - shows the bounce rate for the recent complete calendar month, that is, the percentage of sessions that included only one page visit. Such sessions might be attributed to bot activity. The (green/red) number beside an (up/down) arrow indicates the trend in bounce rate.
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Total Bots - Current Complete Month - shows the calculated estimate of bot sessions as a percentage of the total number of sessions for the most recent complete calendar month. The (green/red) number beside an (up/down) arrow indicates the trend in total bot sessions.
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Bounce Rate - this graph shows the bounce rate for each day of the recent complete calendar month. This visual representation of traffic trends helps to immediately identify potential spikes in bounce rates, that might indicate a high volume of bot activity.
Average Session Duration
The duration of a session can be an indicator of bot activity. This graph shows the average session duration for each day of the most recent complete calendar month.
Daily Traffic
Erratic changes to the number of sessions can be an indicator of bot activity. This graph shows the number of sessions for each day of the most recent complete calendar month. The day with the highest number of sessions is considered suspicious, and investigated in the following graphs.
First Page - Suspicious Date
This table shows the top landing pages on the day of the month that had the highest number of site visits, as indicated in the Daily Traffic graph. This can help approve or disprove the suspicion of bot activity, for example: if the first page is the landing page from an ad or email campaign, that can explain the high traffic on that day, which probably originates from real users clicking the link to your site.
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To sort by a column, click the column heading.
Guest Information - Suspicious Day Traffic
This table shows session data for individual guests on the day that had the highest number of site visits, as indicated in the Daily Traffic graph. Use this table to investigate specific guest profiles as suspect of being bots.
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Click on a guest ref to view its details.
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To sort by a column, click the column heading. For example, it is useful to sort by the session count, because a guest with many sessions and short session durations has a higher likelihood of being a bot.
Bot Proportion - Past 6 Months
This graph shows a visualization of the percentage of suspected bots of the total site traffic for each of the past 6 months. It can quickly highlight any changes in suspicious activity over time.
Bot % Split - Past 6 Months Trend
This graph shows the proportion of each bot type of all the suspected bots for a given month. We track the following bot types:
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Bounce bots - have one page view and drop off from the site.
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High-event bots - spend a relatively short time on the site with a high number of events. The typical activity for this bot type is rapidly moving through the site pages while scraping the site for information.
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Cart bots - repeatedly add multiple items to the cart but never complete a purchase.
Cart Bots report
The Cart Bots section of the Suspected Bot Activity report is used to further investigate sessions that are suspected as cart bots. Cart bots, also known as shopping bots, add many items to the cart during their session, but do not complete the transaction. This can be done to scrape data such as prices, availability, and additional fees such as shipping and taxes. Less commonly, cart bots are used for credential stuffing, or for deliberately targeting limited-availability items and preventing their sale to legitimate buyers. Cart bots can be potentially harmful to retail and fast-paced e-commerce sites, where inventory is reserved for a visitor as long as the item is in their cart.
Sessions that meet all the following criteria appear in the report as suspected cart bots:
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Visitor guest type.
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Abandoned session type.
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Only one session for this guest ref.
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Over 20 items added to the cart during the session.
Cart Bots - Past 6 Months Trend
This chart shows the number of estimated cart bots for all the previous six complete calendar months, allowing you to quickly recognize a rise in bots for a given month. Remember that in a month when there is generally more cart events, there is probably also a rise in the number of suspected cart bots.
Operating system comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of operating systems used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as cart bots. Sometimes, cart bot sessions have minimal identification; in the screenshot, you can see that the suspected cart bots have a much higher rate of unknown operating systems. This further confirms that they are bots.
Browser comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of user agents used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as cart bots. Sometimes, cart bot sessions have minimal identification; in the screenshot, you can see that the suspected cart bots have a much higher rate of other user agents. This further confirms that they are bots. For more information about user agents, see this Wikipedia article.
Cart Bots - Current Complete Month
This table shows individual guest sessions that are suspected as cart bots and the number of items they added. Often, you can see a pattern in the number of items added to the cart (for example, the same number of items over different sessions, or multiplications of ten).
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Click on a guest ref to view its details.
High Event Bots report
The High Event Bots section of the Suspected Bot Activity report is used to further investigate sessions that are suspected as high event bots. High event bots have a large number of events per session, and the duration of each event is short, because the bot quickly moves through site pages to scrape information. However, the sessions are relatively long because the bot scans all site pages for information. High event bots can skew your perception of site traffic, and if you are using affiliate campaigns, might cost your organization money.
Sessions that meet all the following criteria appear in the report as suspected high-event bots:
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Visitor guest type.
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More than one session per guest.
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15 or more events per session.
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The duration of each event is less than 20 seconds.
High Event Bots Trend
This chart shows the number of estimated high event bots for all the previous 6 complete calendar months, allowing you to quickly recognize a rise in bots for a given month.
Duration between events
This graph shows the average event duration in sessions that were identified as high-event bots, for each full calendar month over the past 6 full months.
Operating system comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of operating systems used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as high event bots. Sometimes, high event bot sessions have minimal identification, such as an unknown operating systems. This further confirms that they are bots.
Browser comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of user agents used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as high event bots. Sometimes, bot sessions have minimal identification, such as unknown user agents. This further confirms that they are bots.
High Event Bots - Current Complete Month
This table shows individual guest sessions that are suspected as high event bots, allowing you to go into the details of each suspected bot and their sessions. Click a column heading to sort by its content, in descending order. The table includes the following columns:
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Guest ref - click on a guest ref to view its details.
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Operating system (OS)
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Browser.
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Session count.
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Event count.
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Average time between events.
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Event per session - high event bots usually have relatively long sessions but a short duration for each event.
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Duration per session - high event bots usually have relatively long sessions but a short duration for each event.
Bounce Bots report
The Bounce Bots section of the Suspected Bot Activity report in Sitecore CDP is used to further investigate sessions that are suspected as bounce bots. Bounce bots visit only one page per session, and their sessions are very short. Bounce bots can give a false view of site traffic and can have a negative impact on SEO rankings that monitor the time spent on your organization's website.
Sessions that meet the following criteria appear in the report as suspected bounce bots:
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More than one session for the guest ref.
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Only one page visit per session.
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Very short sessions.
Bounce Bots - Past 6 Month Trend
This chart shows the number of estimated bounce bots for all the previous 6 complete calendar months, allowing you to quickly recognize a rise in bots for a given month.
Bounce Bots - Duration per Events: Past 6 Months Trend
This graph shows the average event duration in sessions that were identified as bounce bots, for each full calendar month over the past 6 full months.
Sometimes, bounce bot sessions have minimal identification, such as an unknown operating system or unknown user agents. This further confirms that they are bots.
Operating system comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of operating systems used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as bounce bots.
Browser comparison
This section includes two charts that show the distribution of user agents used in sessions: one for all guests, and one for sessions that are suspected as bounce bots.
Bounce Bots - Current Complete Month
This table shows individual guest sessions that are suspected as bounce bots, allowing you to go into the details of each suspected bot and their sessions. Click a column heading to sort by its content, in descending order. The table includes the following columns:
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Guest ref - click on a guest ref to view its details.
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User agent.
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Operating system (OS).
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Session count - bounce bots usually have many sessions.
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Duration per session (seconds) - bounce bot sessions are usually very short; a few seconds or less.
